


We Save Ourselves

by futurelounging



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Detective, Gotham's Writing Workshop, Multi, Mystery, Thriller, noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-03-15 11:54:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13612857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futurelounging/pseuds/futurelounging
Summary: Jamie, Claire, and John. Noir.A brutal attack upends the lives of Jamie, Claire, and John. They join forces with a detective to track down the attacker.NSFW (violence, sex)





	1. It Seemed Like A Nice Neighborhood To Have Bad Habits In

The fog cut through the inky darkness of the warehouse alleys, wrapping around the disheveled bodies of vagrants curled into themselves. Jamie pulled his collar up against his neck to ward off the damp, cool air rolling in from the wharf and did not slow his pace as he stepped over them, knowing he’d find who he was looking for in the brick skeleton just ahead. The air was thick with the smell of oil-soaked rags and refuse burning in a barrel. The empty warehouse’s entrance lay just ahead, guarded by a one-armed man who went by the name of Duncan. Jamie tipped his hat back, letting the flickering light hit his face. Duncan’s nod and grunt served as greeting and admittance. 

John had learned early on to stake out his place, to not waver in his claim of concrete. Consistency was essential to survival. There were some who preyed on the uncertain; those who might stumble in unfamiliar surroundings would find themselves beaten, stripped of anything remotely useful. That was the fate of the lucky. The unlucky never got a second chance to stake a claim.

John rolled onto his back and groaned, a wave of nausea causing sweat to bead on his forehead. The light suddenly disappeared, and he grasped the wet mattress below him in panic, unable to move.

“John! Wake up, man! John!” The voice was so close; the breath on his face sweet with whisky and tobacco. He was going to die in a cloud of that breath and he was so grateful. Then that voice became a body. Hands gripped under his arms and hauled him up so he was sitting, his body slumped forward. 

John swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “You shouldn’t be here, Jamie.”

“Neither should you.”

John slung his arm over Jamie’s shoulder and they stood together, clumsily steadying themselves in the darkness. As they limped out, Jamie dropped some coins into Duncan’s hand and received a grunted farewell in return.

Once out of the alley Jamie picked up the pace, nearly carrying John up the dark city streets. The five blocks to Jamie’s apartment always felt a great deal longer on these nights, not from the weight of carrying his friend, but from a despair that crept over him. Helplessness. But tonight was different. As they neared his building he felt within him a hopeful tug, like the heavy draw of an anchor pulling up from the deep.

John’s breath was labored, and his voice ached with exhaustion. “You don’t need to do this, Jamie.”

“Aye, I do. And there’s someone waiting upstairs who might be able to help ye.”

She must have seen them from the window overlooking the street as she was there in the doorway when they turned down the hall. John rasped in Jamie’s ear. “What are you into here, my friend?”

Claire stood aside as Jamie hauled John into the tiny apartment, lowering him gently onto the sofa. He pulled off John’s boots and wrapped a worn old blanket over him, tucking it up under his chin like he was putting his child to bed. John hated this. And loved this.   

Jamie remained kneeling next to John and spoke softly to him. “This is Claire. She’s a nurse. She’ll help ye get past the worst of it if ye’ll let her. She has a good touch.”

John’s eyebrows rose in amusement. “Does she now?”

Jamie realized what he’d said and laughed quietly. “ _Don’t_ say a word. Now I’ve got to go bathe. Ye’ll do as she says.”

Claire sat on the edge of the coffee table, and without a word, lifted John’s head and touched a glass of water to his parched lips. She didn’t speak to him until Jamie had gone to bed. Until John had lost what little was left in his stomach. Until his body stopped shaking for a brief while and the only sound in the room was the quiet ticking from the radiator.

“Why did you do it? Why did you go down there, amongst those men, to shoot up?”

John smiled, admiring her wild curly hair, springing out from the pins that had long ago lost the fight to contain it. “It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.” 

She looked into his eyes, just a hint of amusement on her face. “We all have bad habits, John. Trying to kill yourself with them seems a tad unnecessary.” 

“And I suppose it is necessary that I live? Who, exactly, requires my existence?”

“Jamie. He loves you. He would be devastated should anything happen to you.” She rubbed her ring finger absentmindedly, humming lightly. “Is there no one else in your life?”

“There are always people. But…” He swallowed the lump in his throat, annoyed at her for asking him to think about these things. Annoyed at himself for desperately wanting her reassurance. “Men like me cannot have people the way we might want. No matter what we...no matter what I do, I am, at best, someone’s bad habit.” 

“We are more than our habits. Jamie says you are clever and well-read and a very fine friend. Quite lovable traits.”

John pushed himself upright and finished his glass of water. He was suddenly aware of how badly he must look and smell. “Well, you flatter me.” 

“I don’t intend to flatter. I’m wiping away some of the grime that’s accumulated on your mirror, so you can see who you really are.” Claire stood abruptly, rolling her shoulders and stretching her arms above her head. “Can you stand?” 

John eyed her curiously, uncertain what she had planned. “I believe so.” 

“Good. Go wash up and then join me at the table for a game of chess.”

“You want to play chess at three in the morning?”

Claire pulled the chess set out from the bottom of the bookshelf and began setting up the pieces, paying no attention to him as he swayed weakly in the dim light of the living room. “I’m quite terrible at the game, so this should be interesting.”

He smiled, a wide and heartfelt grin. “Perfect.”


	2. You Can't Dwell On It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie tries to get John a job working at his uncle's machine shop. John learns from Claire how she and Jamie met.

John stayed at Jamie’s insistence. _I don’t trust them_ , he’d said of the other characters in John’s story.   _They will take you in, feed you, find you temporary work, buy you drinks and approximate friendship, but when their own demons surface, they’ll grasp at you and pull you under with them._  

Jamie and John met as underclassmen, barreling over life’s gifts with the spring-heeled vigor of youth and masculine energy. John ran track, his pale legs’ straining muscles pushing him past the pack. His morning route cut through the wooded edge of a city park, an unofficial trail through low-hanging branches and muddy slopes carved by the feet of outliers. The wooded trail angled toward the road as it neared the pond. This is where he first saw Jamie and where Jamie first saw him.

Jamie ran the road with purpose, his arms pumping and red hair whipping behind him. He glanced John’s way and smiled, not expecting to see someone flickering through the poplar thicket. Their eyes danced back and forth, teasing grins growing as their steps doubled, then tripled until they were sprinting against the other, their lungs burning and clawing at their throats.

Jamie won, of course. The straight, smooth road propelling him past John’s stuttering gait over rocks and treacherous roots. Jamie stood at the clearing, his hands braced on his thighs, as his body took in deep gulps of oxygen, as John approached. “God, yer fast on that trail. I was flat-out on the road to match ye.” John’s answering grin was wide and open and full of boyish exuberance at the compliment, at the beauty before him, at the sheer wildness of pushing his own body. Thereafter they met each morning, ran the trails together, experimented with new routes, and eventually ended up tossing rocks and sticks in the pond like children, challenging each other to the most skips (John), the farthest throw (Jamie), and the best splash (subjectively, a tie).

They’d found each other again and again over the years until the city began to devour them both. Jamie began working for his uncle in a small machine shop, cutting metal parts. John’s family brought him in to their real estate business. It would have been so easy for him to walk that path, privilege laid at his feet, if only he were made of the right material. If only he hadn’t believed his heart deserved its desire. Darkness filled the spaces in him, seeping through his skin and trailing behind him, an oily shadow. He left smudges on the family finery one too many times, had given in to his wicked heart in spite of the consequences and it had been too much.

He used Jamie’s kind heart to heal his own again and again. And again now, they sat at the table, pushing potatoes and overcooked ham in circles on their plates. Jamie tipped his head back and let the remaining drops of lager slide over his tongue. “I’ll talk to my uncle in the morning. See if we can start ye on a machine, workin’ alongside me perhaps, to learn the ways of it.”

“I can’t… You’ve done too much, Jamie.”

Jamie’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “I dinna think anyone’s ever done too much for ye, John. And I’ll not hear yer refusal.”

John smiled to himself at the predictable goodness of his friend. “Thank you.”

When Claire slipped through the door at ten ‘til midnight, John was deep into his third reading of East of Eden. He’d traced his fingers over the books on Jamie’s shelves only to settle for the comfort of the known, his mind too uncertain to make room for new stories.

“Do you not sleep, John?”

He pressed his handkerchief in the book to mark his page. “It’s not my strong suit, I’m afraid. My mind finds it distasteful and punishes me for it.”

She pulled the pins from her hair, dropping them into an ashtray in the doorway, curls springing loose with each soft clink. “Has it always been that way, or do you think it’s part of the withdrawal?”

Her unabashed and frank curiosity was as compelling to him as any trait she held, utterly foreign to his understanding of women. He’d felt no loss in his preference for men as most women had seemed to have suppressed their curiosity or had none to begin with. Although, if he were honest, men did not fare much better on the whole - Jamie being the exception.  “It’s perhaps worse now, but I’m no stranger to it. I’m quite accustomed to going without, you know.”

“Are you then?” Her teasing eyebrow quirked. She poured herself whisky straight, offering none to him, and sat opposite him in an armchair, her stockinged leg dangling limply over the arm.

John looked to her like a trapped animal, who, if sprung free, would run to a corner and will himself invisible. He was hiding from himself, from the world, from the relentless march of time. She saw herself in him, just months ago.

She’d become lost in thought, staring at the lines in the wallpaper, seeing nothing, when he broke her trance. “He saved you, too.”

She swallowed her drink and rested the glass on her stomach. “No. He did not save me, John. Jamie reminded me who I was, which is not to say it was insignificant. It wasn’t. But we only save ourselves. No one can do it for us.” She swung her leg down and walked to the table, refilling her glass. “Whatever left its mark on you, you can’t dwell on it. That’s its power.”

John let his head fall back against the sofa, the skin of his throat stretching tight. “What left its mark on you, Claire?” His eyes fell to her empty ring finger.

She settled back into the chair and brought the glass to her lips, the alcohol burning a scratch inside her lip. _Who. Who left his mark._ “Six months ago, I was finishing a long shift, worked night and a good part of the day in the ER. There had been a multi-car accident, so we were swamped, but I was swaying on my feet. They told me to go ahead and leave. On my way out, I saw this man sitting in the waiting area with two of his friends, looking white as a sheet, slumped over. I could see he was in a lot of pain, and there was no way he’d be getting help quickly with the rush. I didn’t want him to sit there suffering...and maybe part of me didn’t want to go home. So, I found a little room and brought him in. His friends, Rupert and Angus, they stood outside the door to try to ward off anyone curious.”

“What on earth happened to him?”

“I took off his shirt and could see right away his shoulder was displaced and horribly bruised. They were installing a new machine. A heavy piece was being lowered to fit on it and the line snagged and it swung ‘round right into Jamie. He’s fortunate it didn’t break his arm. Or worse.”

_“This is the worst part.” His breath coming in panicked gasps was the only sound he made until she’d popped it back into place._

_“Dhia! It doesna hurt anymore.”_

_“It will.”_

_She wrapped his shoulder, her hands lingering on his warm skin._

_“You’ve a good touch. Your husband is a lucky man.” She shouldn’t have cried, perhaps might have contained it if she hadn’t been tired. If what he said hadn’t pulled her back to the day before. He wrapped his good arm around her and gathered her to him, murmuring in her ear while she shook._

 

> _“Don’t_ touch _me!”_
> 
> _“Frank, I don’t know why you’re upset. Tell me what I’ve done.”_
> 
> _“What you’ve done? Humiliate me and then make me recount it for you. Absolutely. They were mocking me, Claire. And you laughed along with them. My own wife!”_
> 
> _“They weren’t… it was all just fun. They weren’t targeting you or trying to humiliate you. You know I’d never do that.”_
> 
> _His face had gone red, trembling with effort, as he dropped his voice and spat the words into her ear. “Do not tell me what I know.” His palm slapped the wall near her ear and she hated herself for jumping because she knew what was coming next. It played out the same way over and over until she couldn’t remember what it had been like before._
> 
> _Frank pulled her against him as he shook, sobbing into her hair. “I love you so much, Claire. Do you not understand that? I don’t know what I have to do to make you see how much you mean to me. And how much it hurts me when you take that for granted.”_
> 
> _“I know you love me. I love you, too.”_
> 
> _His fingers dug into her hips. “Do you? How do I know when your actions say otherwise?”_
> 
> _“I do.”_
> 
> _“Then show me. I need you to show me. Show me that you love me as much as I love you.” His pleading moved to his hands, pulling at buttons and zippers, his voice whimpering between jagged breaths, the whisky fumes hot on her neck. She watched only the skin on her hands pulled tight and bloodless with her grip on the table._
> 
> _Afterward he buried his face in the backs of her thighs and cried again. “I love you so much.”_
> 
> _“I have to get ready for work.”_

 

“He was outside the hospital the next night, sitting on a bench.”

_Will ye let me buy you a coffee...or a drink, for the kindness ye granted me last night?_

 “And what became of your husband?”

“I left him three weeks after meeting Jamie. I saw him with another woman three days after I left, so I think his poor heart did not suffer so much. Divorce finalized two months ago. And after paying a lawyer I have precisely zero dollars to my name so you’re not the only one living off Jamie’s goodwill.”

John’s smile grew into a yawn.

“Try to sleep, John.”

“You, too.”

 

* * *

 

He’d fallen asleep with the curtains parted and woke to an angry sun bursting through his lids, reflecting off the windows of the building across the street. The noises of life on the street below were a manic symphony of traffic and car doors and shouting and an energy that woke his muscles, pressing the aches of sleep away. Claire still slept, but Jamie had left him a note on the table.

_John -_

_I’ll speak to my uncle this morning, but I think the best way to sway him to our cause is face-to-face. Make yourself (moderately) presentable and come to the shop around 11. Come right up to the office as they’ll not hear you on the floor._

He’d retrieved some clothing yesterday. The least wrinkled of his shirts would have to do and he borrowed one of Jamie’s hats to hide his need for a haircut. Coffee, toast and jam, a newspaper. He almost felt normal and laughed at himself imagining his little domestic fantasy. It was only 10:30. Early, but unlikely that would cause much issue.

The shop was far noisier than he’d imagined. He’d need to be standing in front of someone to get their attention in this place. John ascended the open, metal staircase leading to the office, its windows looking over the operations floor.

A wave of nervous energy rolled through John as he approached the door. He raised his hand to knock and recalled Claire’s words the night before. _We only save ourselves._ His friend, his truest, most loyal friend, was giving him the tools to do just that. He would not waste this opportunity. He rapped twice in quick succession but received no reply. Not surprising with the noise of this place. He turned the knob and peeked his head into the office. “Hello? Um, it’s John.”

The sound that answered him was something short of a moan and his heart sped up in alarm. He stepped into the room and felt his stomach drop. His mouth opened, but he had no sound, no faculties to address the sight before him. John stumbled forward and let his hands drop to Jamie’s head, face-down on the table before him, hair matted with blood. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing at first, the grotesque tableau. Jamie slumped forward, tied to a chair, his hand hung at his side, bleeding and mangled, and his shirt ripped open at the back, deep knife gouges drawing rivers of blood from his body.

“Jamie. God, Jamie.”


	3. Red Is More My Color

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie is attacked at the shop.  
> (warning: graphic descriptions of violence)

Jamie tucked the newspaper under his arm and dropped a coin into the boy’s ink-stained palm. The morning was cooler than he’d anticipated, a crisp chill in the air hinting at winter. He’d need to get his boots repaired soon and mend his scarf. The note Jamie had left for John said to meet him at the shop later in the morning and he hoped he’d have the good sense to borrow a hat.

Jamie’s frugal ways, shaped by a hard youth tending his family’s lands in Scotland, had never left him. His uncle, Colum, had offered him schooling and work in Edinburgh when he was 15. His home in the Highlands was a wild place, as much responsible for who he was as his parents’ guiding hands. Leaving left a hole in his chest that never closed, a hollow pocket carved in stone.

Three days after his 17th birthday, two months since he’d last been home, he learned his father had died of a stroke while walking a field a mile from their home. His brother-in-law, Ian, took the dogs looking for him when he didn’t return home for dinner and they found him, hours later, face down in the wet grass. 

Jamie stood at his father’s grave and shuddered under the unending sky. The land he’d once called his home had now been tainted. He couldn’t walk through a field without imagining his feet stumbling upon his father’s body. His nightmares were dark visions of himself chasing away the animals trying to feed on his father, of the rains melting away his skin, of the earth swallowing his corpse before Jamie could get to it.

His mother had died, years earlier, in his father’s bedroom, after giving birth to a stillborn child. She bled and bled, soaking through blankets and rugs and filling the cracks of the floorboards. Jamie never entered that room again. That piece of his home was taken from him. And now, the land had caught his father’s dying form and greedily claimed his last breaths. The house was death. The land was death.

He crossed an ocean with his other uncle, Dougal. They meant to begin business in a new land, pockets filled with Colum’s money. Jamie tucked away his past and the pain he’d worn, pressed it into the hollow place in his chest, and began anew.

Impromptu shinty amongst fellow Scottish expats resulted in the serendipitous awarding of a scholarship to attend a university to play lacrosse.  He read books and ran and found his friend John. And when it was over, the hole in his chest echoed like a cavern.

He ran to the city because the city sky was not unending, but broken, stabbed by the spires of buildings, slashed by elevated rail lines. The city was at war with the sky and the echoing hole in his chest quieted.

Jamie thumbed a ball of lint in his jacket pocket, rolling it between his fingers as he lowered his head against a swirling wind. The sidewalk was wet from pot-bellied men spraying down their shops’ entries, cigarettes dangling precariously from their chapped lips.

As he neared Dougal’s machine shop, he skirted trucks protruding from alleys and side-stepped an overturned garbage bin. The side door to the shop was open when he approached. Dougal must be in already.

Rupert studied the day’s work orders at a wobbly table under a pegboard of hanging tools. “Mornin’ to ye, Jamie.”

“To ye as well. Where’s Angus?”

“Retrievin’ some parts come in at the docks. He’ll be back soon assumin’ he doesn’t take a wrong turn into a pub.”

Jamie ascended the stairs to the office and hung his jacket on a hook next to the door. Dougal was pacing the floor, rubbing his hand over his head.

“Jamie. Mornin’ lad.”

“Mornin’ Dougal. All well?”

Dougal stopped his pacing and walked over to his desk, drawing together some papers that had been strewn about and haphazardly shoved them into an envelope.

“Well enough. Well enough.”

Dougal’s nervous energy settled once the machines on the floor started up, breaking through the heavy silence of the office. They began looking at schedules and inventory, pulling their focus into the work at hand, but Jamie noticed his uncle’s eyes drifting to the clock every few minutes.

“Is there somewhere ye need to be this morning, Uncle? If so, dinna fash. I’ll mind things here.”

Dougal glanced about the office, eyes unsettled and unseeing. A metallic bang startled them both and as Jamie rose to peer out the overlook windows, he realized his uncle had gone the opposite direction, standing defensively at the back of the room. “Looks to be just a pipe dropped.”

Jamie had been waiting for a good time to bring up the subject of John, but it seemed unlikely such a time would present itself. So he forged ahead.

“Dougal, I’ve a friend. Well, you might know him - John Grey, from university. I think he’s met ye at the pub once or twice. He’s a verra fine man and lookin’ for some work. I know things aren’t exactly boomin’ here, but the ledgers are steady and I was wonderin’ if he might come in to meet wi’ ye. Just to talk. I’ve not promised him anything, but that ye might talk with him.”

“Hm. John? That the skinny one?”

“Hmph. Aye, that one.”

“Well yer right, it’s no’ boomin’. But aye, I’ll talk.” Dougal stood abruptly, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He grabbed his jacket and hat, and strode swiftly back to the desk, grabbing the envelope and stuffing it into his jacket. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Jamie headed to the floor to check on the machines, stopping to inspect the morning’s production and sweep up the iron shavings accumulating on the floor. John wasn’t due for an hour. _Best get some work in first._ He settled back in the office and his vision soon narrowed to the papers in front of him, the rhythmic drone of the machines almost soothing to him.

He was so engrossed with his work, he failed to hear the footsteps on the staircase. Nor did he hear the men enter the room. Not until a meaty hand slapped the table, scattering his papers and stuttering his heartbeat.

Jamie was far from frail. He’d kept enough muscle from his athletic college years to intimidate most, but the men before him sent shivers down his spine. One was a hulking brute with a pock-marked face, barrel-chested, with a look about him that suggested he’d not fare well in a debate. The other was not so large, nor huffing with aggression, but instead looked placidly at Jamie with dark, empty eyes, a smirk pulling at his thin lips. He wore his hair long, but slicked back tightly against his head and tied with a leather strap in the back. His impeccable pin-striped suit looked almost clownish against the steel and grease of the shop.

Swallowing a lump in his throat, Jamie stood. “What is it I can help ye with?”

The suit ignored his question and walked slowly to Dougal’s desk, craning his neck behind him to watch Jamie, who shifted uncomfortably between the two men.

“I’m here to see Mr. Mackenzie. We have business.” The man flipped through a stack of papers with a disinterested stare, then slowly pushed them over the edge of the desk, watching them flutter to the floor.

“He’s gone out for a bit. If ye come back later, perhaps he’ll be here.”

He walked up to Jamie and stood just a little too close. Leaning in, the man touched a finger to a button midway down Jamie’s shirt and pressed it into his chest. “You’re a Scot,” his face sneering in disgust at the word. “Don’t suppose you’re a relation of Mr. Mackenzie? You do have that brutish, thick-skulled look about you.”

Jamie would wonder, days later as he lie immobile, if revealing he was Dougal’s nephew was what had triggered it. Or would it have happened regardless? There was something vile and depraved in the man’s face, a loathsome hate swirling beneath his pale skin. Perhaps fate would have felled Jamie no matter the circumstance.

He sat when the man asked, hating himself for acquiescing, but knowing he’d not fare well in a fight. Nor was he willing to risk drawing his friends into the situation. He’d do as he was told and they would leave.

But something in the man’s eyes sparked to life when Jamie sat down. Blood rushed to his face, like his heart had sped up and his entire being thrummed.

A cold terror crept up Jamie’s throat. “What’s yer name? I can tell Dougal ye stopped by.”

His lips curled in a joyless smile. “Randall. I’ve been branded with the moniker of Black Jack, though red is more my color.  I suppose Red Jack doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.”

Jamie found himself unable to look at him, his mind stuck on that name. Claire’s ex had been a Randall, but he’d never heard her speak of a brother. Coincidental, most likely.

“I do have a message I would like you to relay to your uncle should he show his thieving face here again.”

Jamie raised his eyes to Randall, indicating his focused attention, and watched him nod to the other man who stepped behind Jamie and yanked his arm back roughly around the back of the chair. With a leather belt he’d pulled from his jacket, he tied the one arm to the back of the chair and bound his feet to the legs of the table with thick rope.

“What are ye -?”

The final word died in his throat as his head slammed into the table, splitting his brow. The brute behind him pulled his head back by his hair and he met Randall’s eyes through a blur of sweat and blood.

“Your uncle has broken the trust we’d established. He has failed to uphold his end of our bargain and apparently is too cowardly to face me himself. He’d rather offer you up. Well, I think we should let him know exactly what his consequences will look like when I do finally see him again.”

Jamie’s body seized in panic, every muscle straining against the bonds, against the man holding him down, against the fear squeezing his chest.

“Put your hand on the table.”

He didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Randall ignored him and walked across the office to a wall of hand tools, hanging from hooks. He surveyed them, his hands casually slipped into the pockets of his trousers. Selecting a mallet, he walked back to Jamie, tilting his head to the side.

“Hand, please.”

“Hmmph...no. I don’t -.”

It happened so quickly. Randall had barely pulled Jamie’s hand and flattened it to the table before the mallet fell upon his knuckles with a crunching thud. The shock of such pain took his breath before his scream could build. And the next swing landed just below the last, crushing the two middle fingers, the bone of the longest finger jutting through the skin as blood oozed into the creases of his skin. His cry shook his entire body, but it was lost in the air, matching the whining din of the machines below, the relentless grinding pitch that would take most of their hearing before they’d turn fifty.

Jamie slumped forward, his arm unable to stop shaking with the pain and shock setting in. He was barely aware of the keening, blubbering sounds falling from his lips, his mind too lost to form words. To beg for an end.

He heard a ripping sound and the cool air from the vents hit his back suddenly, rousing him from his stupor. Jamie looked up to see that Randall was no longer before him. What he felt next was unlike the pain he’d just experienced. This was precise and burning, like being cut with flame. It was quick and brutal and stole his breath. Three slices of the blade on his back. He fell forward and neither saw, nor heard them leave.

He lie there, drifting in and out of consciousness for hours it seemed, bile rising in his throat if he came too close to waking. Until John’s voice. When he first heard it, thin and far away, he’d panicked at the thought of someone touching him again, of having to move and awaken the pain of his wounds. _Let me die._

“Jamie. God, Jamie.”

* * *

 

Claire slung her bag over her shoulder and leaned against the nurse’s station desk to bury her nose in the bouquet of flowers recently delivered. “Who sent these, Maggie?”

“Oh, Mrs. Campbell’s husband, of course. I’m glad she’s home again, but honestly I’ll miss seeing him around. If we could, I’d hire him to just come by and cheer us all up once in awhile." 

Claire liked Maggie. She’d been a great help in Claire’s transition to the new ward. The ER had been Claire’s life for years and her energy had been so attuned to the chaos of the place, the noises and bustle and uncertainty of it, that moving to post-op care had been almost jarring in its measured pace and quiet. But after a month, she’d come to appreciate its own sounds. The squeak of shoes, the drips and beeps and Maggie’s sudden bursts of laughter, bubbling over. She’d needed this after Frank, needed to remember the other side of life.

Her oxfords clacked rapidly down the stairwell and as she reached for the first-floor door, it swung wide, nearly hitting her.

“Louise! God, you scared me.”

Leaving Louise was the only thing holding her back from her decision to move away from the ER, but her friend had assured her that they’d still meet up for breaks and drinks. Louise’s normally rosy cheeks were pale now and her face knotted with worry.

“Claire! I was worried I’d missed you. I need you to come with me.”

There was a mask that Claire would draw over herself at the start of each shift, a clinical filter for her mind to process the blood and gore and pain. Sometimes the nights were filled with broken fingers and belly aches and the destitute looking for medication. Other nights, bodies rolled in on stretchers soaked in blood and tissue, where the thought of reassembling these people seemed impossible. The mask held it all back just enough for her to go home and sleep without endless nightmares.

She slipped the mask on as Louise led her by the hand through the curious craning heads of her colleagues, leaning to see into the room, through the police officers who met her eyes and quickly looked away.

Louise stopped them just outside the door to the room. “They need to fix his hand still, but his back is stitched up. He said your name when he first came in but I didn’t know until just a bit ago he meant you. His friend brought him, but he left after he talked to the police.”

Louise’s words washed over Claire, sounds without meaning. As the officers parted, she walked between them and into the room. The first thing she saw were his toes. He was so tall his feet hung over the end of the bed and his toes peeked from the bottom of the blanket, hanging loosely around his ankles. It covered his legs and backside and stopped at his lower back.

She drifted closer, not feeling her legs, not remembering how to breathe. She could hear herself screaming in her head, but nothing escaped her mouth. She walked around him to the side of his bed, where his bruised and bandaged head lie turned on the pillow, his uninjured hand tucked under his chin like a child. Her face was hot and wet with tears and her throat constricted as she grasped his fingers in hers, as she tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear. “I’m here.”

When she’d walked around his body, she’d not wanted to look, but the mask hadn’t been enough to shield her. Just this once, it had failed. She saw and would never forget the image, seared on her mind in that second, of his back. Of the dark trail of stitches pulling his tender skin together in perfect lettering: **VI**.


	4. That bad, is it?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire and John meet with the detective working Jamie's case. They visit Jamie in the hospital and learn some valuable information.

She’d left him. Walked out the hospital doors with her coat unbuttoned, eyes seeing nothing. The wind cut through her, battering her skin and drying tears before they could slide down her cheeks. It turned directions with her. Up the steps from the train, it barreled down her throat. Heading north on Fifth, it spun around the church spires to lash out at her as she turned the corner. 

Her clothes fell from her body as she entered the apartment. Utter stillness. A stale, empty tomb. The water wasn’t hot enough when she stepped into the bath. Nothing was enough.

_Go home and rest. Get something to eat. Come back tomorrow afternoon. They’re working on his hand in the morning, but he should be awake later. He’s completely out with meds, Claire. Take care of yourself. I’ve got him._

_Thank you, Louise._

Claire pulled her fingers through her wet hair and slipped on his shirt. It hung loose on her shoulders and she pulled the collar around her cheeks, her eyes fluttering shut at his scent. After shave, sweat, soap. Jamie.

Her feet drifted soundlessly to the living room, dark and untouched. John’s blankets lay in a neatly folded pile next to the sofa.

“Where the fuck are you, John?”

 

* * *

 

John stumbled on the steps, his muscles giving way to exhaustion. He’d not eaten since breakfast, and that had left him soon after he ran out the hospital doors. The cold air numbed his face and the veins in his arms itched relentlessly. He scratched at them and denied them their wishes. Miles of city pavement saw the bloodied soles of his shoes. Neither the abrasive gravel of the railyard, nor the water gathered over the clogged drains by the docks had been enough. He hefted his ankle over his knee and pressed his thumb’s nail into the sole’s threading. Red.

_Mr. Grey, you’re to come to the precinct in the morning for an interview with the detective. We’d like to speak with the girlfriend as well._

He steadied his hands enough to unlock the door and eased himself into the apartment, as quietly as he could. Darkness and silence met him. He ran scalding water over his hands, splashed it on his face until his skin was red. He left on only his undergarments and nudged his blood-encrusted clothing behind the bathroom door. He’d throw them away in the morning.

Claire was curled up on her side, on top of the blankets, her knees pressed up to her chest. John lowered himself carefully, wincing as the mattress dipped with his weight. He pulled the blanket from the foot of the bed over her legs and curled into her back, releasing a breath and letting his body deflate.

Claire stiffened for a moment, discerning the form behind her. Then she reached back, grasping in the dark and pulled John’s arm over her hip, cradling his hand against her breast. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere.”

Her body relaxed once again, and her breathing slowed.

He’d never had this before. Never slept with his body pressed against another. Never comforted another by his touch. The part of his humanity that had been starved of this kindled like a flame long-starved of air. His eyes fell shut and he breathed in her scent, her hair tickling his cheek, as he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

 

The petite older woman at the front desk of the police station eyed the duo before her with a blend of boredom and annoyance. “Sign in on this sheet, then go to security and wait there until they call you back.” She punctuated her final statement by slapping a bell that didn’t appear to do anything except close the door on any further interaction. Claire and John had no complaints, having barely spoken since waking groggily an hour ago.

Security consisted of a rotund, mustachioed officer asking them if they had any weapons then pointing at a bench for them to wait upon. John slumped against the back of the bench and ran his hand over the wood grain. “Is this a church pew?" 

“Why would the police station have a church pew?”

“Could be donated,” he mumbled.

The department office door swung wide and a clean-cut, boyish-looking detective approached them, hand outstretched. “Miss Beauchamp, Mr. Grey. I’m Detective Fitzgibbon. If you’ll follow me.” John and Claire followed the detective through a maze of desks, by policemen who made no effort to conceal their stares.

“Be nice to them, Fitz.”

“They let him out of school to play detective today.”

His colleagues peppered him with teasing comments as he walked by. John and Claire gave each other a look. _We’re getting the new guy, apparently._

They sat across from the detective’s perfectly organized desk, the metal feet of their chairs scraping loudly across the linoleum as they inched closer. The detective had dark, almost black hair, slicked back off his face, save for a few stubborn strands that he’d push back whenever he looked down to read. He was undoubtedly young, and judging from the ribbing of the others, newly appointed to the position. His face had an earnest warmth, a smile that curved up to his deep brown eyes.

Claire squared her shoulders. “Detective Fitzgibbon, have you -”

“Please, you can call me Nick. My father was a police officer here for many years. I don’t feel right using that title. ‘Nick’ is fine.”

“Have you spoken with Jamie, Nick?”

“I have. Just this morning. Very briefly. He...he was a bit groggy and was being prepped for surgery. But yes, we spoke. And I got his statement about what he remembers of the…” Nick glanced briefly to his left. Another detective sat opposite him, blatantly staring, listening to Nick’s every word. His face was stern, almost threatening, and Nick quickly looked away. “...the incident.”

John huffed an incredulous laugh. “Incident? Spilling coffee on my trousers this morning was an incident. You cannot seriously be calling this an incident.”

Nick held his hands up. “No, I… it’s merely a legal term. Believe me, I’ve seen the severity of his injuries. I understand this is very difficult for you. Mr. Fraser is an acquaintance of yours, is that correct?”

Claire laid a hand on John’s arm to calm him and he placed his hand over hers appreciatively. “A very dear friend, in fact.”

“And Miss Beauchamp, you’re in a relationship with Mr. Fraser. You’re... um...intimately involved, but not married, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And you were divorced from your first husband recently?”

Claire’s hand tensed on John’s forearm. John’s voice was terse. “What does this have to do with what happened to Jamie?”

Nick gave them a strange look, his eyebrows raised and eyes darting to the officer watching him from across the aisle. He smiled weakly and pulled a small sheet of paper from his notepad. He wrote quickly as he spoke to them.

“Just verifying some facts. Now, you were at work when the incident occurred, and we’ve verified that with the hospital, Miss Beauchamp. And Mr. Grey, you were to meet with Jamie at his job, and that is when you found him, according to your statement. Correct?”

John nodded. “Yes.”

“And were you able to speak to him when you found him? Did he mention any names?”

John’s face hardened, and his throat constricted. He shook his head slowly. “He couldn’t speak.”

“Well, we will be following up on any leads and reviewing the evidence. But for now, I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do. I’ll be in touch if I have any more questions.”

Nick stood quickly and walked around his desk to shake their hands as they stood, unmoving and incredulous. Before they could speak, Nick took John’s hand to shake it and pressed the note into his palm. Claire noted the transaction and played along.

“Thank you for your help, Nick. Please let us know if you find out anything.”

He escorted them to the front door of the precinct and nodded with a reassuring smile. Claire pulled him along, swiftly aiming for the intersection and John turned his head back as they entered the crosswalk, his eyes meeting the detective’s, still standing in the doorway.

* * *

 

John opened the note as soon as they had turned the corner and showed it to Claire.

_Mucci’s_

_Lowry & 23rd_

_3 pm_

They spoke in whispers, tucked under the awning of a pharmacy. “What is going on here, John?”

“I can’t be certain, but it seems our friend Nick might be the only one interested in finding out who did this. Do you trust him?”

“I don’t know that we have much choice, do we? Besides, I think this note might have as much to do with him spending more time gazing at you as it does with finding Jamie’s attacker.”

“Wh-?” John’s eyes nervously darted around, and she noted a flush creeping up his face. “He was not gazing at me.”

Her eyebrows darted up in amusement at his embarrassment. “He’s very nice-looking. Very tidy.”

“Stop.”

“I’m starving. I’ll buy you lunch if you promise to tell me what his most attractive feature is.”

“God.” John marched away from her and she followed, a victorious grin breaking out on her face.

They made their way to a diner near the hospital, subconsciously gravitating toward Jamie. The jovial banter they’d kept up on the walk there was replaced with a heavy silence once they settled into the booth.

John spent the meal staring out the window, as if looking at Claire’s face might conjure up the image of Jamie. Of his beaten and bloodied body, his new nightmare tapestry. She watched him mindlessly stab at his eggs and slowly raise the fork to his mouth, not realizing they’d fallen back to the plate. Their coffees grew cold.

His thoughts were too loud, the tension in his frame bending the air around them. Her cheeks vibrated with the strain of containing herself. “I need to see him. I need to touch him and hear his voice.”

The muscle in John’s jaw twitched and he grasped Claire’s hand across the table. “Then let’s go.”

* * *

 

 The bed was raised when they entered. Jamie’s head rested against a pillow, the purple and yellow bruising marring his face. The black stitches meandered from his brow to the middle of his forehead, cutting an angry swath. Suspending from a contraption to his side was his hand, a mass of bandages. 

She breathed a sigh of relief that he was able to put a little pressure on his back, that he wasn’t still face-down and immobile. For his own comfort. And selfishly, so she wouldn’t have to see it. Or think of those letters, carved into him. John nudged her forward, her feet having stopped the moment she saw him. The reality of his trauma washing over her like a wave.

Jamie’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of John clearing his throat. He’d not meant it as an announcement. John stood at the end of the bed and forced a smile to his lips. He wanted to touch Jamie. But, how could he? The memory of the stickiness of the blood between his fingers, the way it seeped into the bed of his nails, seeking every line in John’s skin, was too much.

The air in the room shifted when Jamie realized Claire was there. The light, the oxygen, the gravity all condensed to the space between them. John slid silently into the chair in the corner and let his head fall back.

“Jamie.” Her voice was cracked, dry and broken, nothing like the clear, vibrant tone that spoke to him in his dreams, the voice that had broken through his fog the night he stumbled into her ER.

She stepped closer, her thighs braced against the edge of the bed and he grasped her hip with his hand, a gentle squeeze all he could muster.

Jamie opened his mouth to speak and could not even manage a squeak. She brought the cup of water sitting on his table to his lips. She wiped away a stray droplet, scraping her hand across the stubble on his chin. He was warm and alive.

“Claire.”

She needn’t ask how he felt. It was written clearly on his face. The tense exhaustion rippling over him told her enough. That he was not requesting enough medicine for the pain. And the reason sat in a chair in the corner. She’d never say it. John could not survive that guilt on top of everything else. But she knew that the fear of becoming an addict sat at the back of Jamie’s mind.

Claire leaned forward and gently kissed his brow, careful of the bruising. When she pulled back he lifted his hand to her cheek, wiping a tear away with his thumb.

“That bad, is it? Can ye no’ bear to look at me?”

She felt her heart hammering in her chest. “I want to look at _only_ you, my love.” She let her lips brush his.

He smiled against her mouth. “I appreciate the sentiment, but ye’ll want to mind John’s feelings. I can feel him getting jealous in the corner there.” Her laugh tickled his cheek and she straightened, her demeanor growing serious once again.

“John and I met with the detective this morning. He said he’d met with you earlier, just briefly.”

“Oh aye, I dinna recall much of it, other than he asked the name of the attacker. I was groggy from the drugs, but I recall him looking wide-eyed at my answer. Said I should take care sayin’ that name aloud.”

John leapt from the chair, his eyes darting between Jamie and Claire, whose face bore a similar look of shock. “You know!?” He caught himself speaking far too loudly and drew close to the bed, dropping to a whisper. “You know who attacked you?”

“Aye, the bastard took great pleasure in hearin’ himself speak. I dinna recall all he said, but I asked his name and he gave it. It stuck wi’ me, seein’ as he shares a surname wi’ yer ex.”

“With Frank?”

“Jack Randall, he said. But that he’s known as Black Jack. No mystery as to why.”

John ran his hands through his hair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Something’s going on with this investigation. The detective told us he knew nothing of the attacker, but he was cagey during our conversation. The other officers were listening to his every word. He was obviously hiding something, made entirely obvious by the fact that he slipped us a note to meet him this afternoon at some restaurant.”

Claire crossed her arms, worrying a coat string between her thumb and forefinger. “I’ve no idea who this Jack Randall is. I don’t think I recall hearing that name, but we never really spoke to Frank’s family either. His parents were both dead by the time we married.”

Jamie reached his hand to her, grasping her elbow to pull her back to him. “Dinna fash. It’s likely no’ connected. Common enough name. Ye believe ye can trust this detective? It worries me to think of ye both going to unfamiliar places wi’out knowing what yer gettin’ in to.”

John tentatively laid his hand on Jamie’s ankle, covered by the thin hospital blanket. It seemed the only safe part to touch. “I do trust him. I believe he’s trying to help us, however he can.”

Jamie pursed his lips and nodded to John, a reluctant acceptance. It remained unspoken, but he saw in John’s eyes a promise to his friend. He’d not let harm come to her. He’d do everything he could to find Randall, to never see Jamie hurt like this again.

Claire drew her fingers gently down the side of his face and pressed a kiss to his lips. Did he know it wasn’t merely random cuts on his back? That Randall had carved letters into him. She had imagined they might be initials, but it made no sense now that she knew his name. “I’ll come back tonight. After we meet with the detective.”

Jamie fell back against the pillows when they left and winced at the pain, every strangled breath pulling at the torn skin on his back. He’d held himself together as much as possible with them in the room, but he shook with exertion now, trembling as the cuts in his skin pulsed with each heartbeat.  

* * *

 

John and Claire exited the subway at 25th and began the two-and-a-half block walk to Mucci’s. This part of town made his skin itch. How many nights had he curled up in the corner of some apartment - he never knew whose - sleeping off the drugs, waking to a faceless body nudging him out the door?

He’d stumble to the back of the bathhouse and beg wages for cleaning before the early visitors arrived. Sweating through his filthy clothes, he’d peel them off, sneaking into the bath in hopes of finding someone. There were always men willing, but they were middle-aged bankers with soft bellies full of shame and anger, their wives at uptown restaurants drinking martinis with their eyes closed. These hateful men, who would happily kick his broken body in the streets, in this place would eagerly drop to their knees to take him in their mouth.

He hated his heart, greedy as it was for something real. To curl into the warm embrace of a lover who knew him. Who knew not just the lines of his body, but knew also his dreams and habits and failures, and did not hate him for them.

John had seen Mucci’s a thousand times and never noted its name. The tile outside the entry a familiar pattern under his feet, but only as another step toward nothing.

They were met inside the door by a man who waved them to the back with barely more than a glance. Nick sat against the wall, his foot nervously fidgeting, gnawing a toothpick to splinters. They sat and Claire cut him off before he had a chance for pleasantries.

“Who is Jack Randall?”


	5. They Just Keep Coming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire, John, and Nick begin their hunt for Black Jack.

“Who is Jack Randall?” 

Nick rubbed the back of his neck, slyly glancing around the dark corner of the restaurant. A man two tables over shoveled spaghetti into his mouth with seemingly no regard for Claire’s question and he pushed aside his paranoia.

It wasn’t so much that everyone knew Jack Randall, but rather those who did were curiously silent about him. Or not-so-curiously intimidating. He’d heard the name “Black Jack” a few times, muttered into bottles of beer by officers who’d gladly knock him out for inquiring. There were plenty of thugs in the city, well-known purveyors of unsavory goods and services, extortionists and sharks. Some had enough pull to keep out of jail permanently, but few evaded the law entirely like Randall. There was fear at the mention of his name, but something else as well. Protection. Untouchable. He had high connections.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be forthright with you at the station. When Jamie told me the name this morning it was...a bit of a blow. Before I saw you both, I went down to records and requested anything with his name. There was nothing. But I’d heard of him. And guys like that...who do what he did, they don’t do it on a whim. There’s no way this was his first time.”

Claire leaned forward on her elbows, running her finger along the checkered tablecloth. “The letters. VI.”

John flinched beside her, grinding his teeth. They hadn’t seen it the way he had. The flesh gaping, cuts so deep the blood continued to drain from him, rivers converging down his spine and pooling at the top of his pants.

“John, are you okay?” Nick pushed his water to John, nodding for him to drink it. “You look as if you might pass out.”

“I’m fine. Thank you.” This is how it would be, a constant reopening of wounds, remembering of trauma and swallowing it.

“VI. It has to mean _something_. Why would he…?” She trailed off, unable to speak the words, make herself imagine it happening. She’d already spent her night curled into a ball on her bed at the thought of what he felt, of the terror of being unable to stop it. She would not bring it alive again here.

Nick shook his head. “I don’t know. I agree, it’s got to mean something. But I think it may be something personal. I don’t think it’s the number of his apartment, right?” He worked a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. “No, I think the only answers we’ll get will be when we find him.”

John raised his head from his hands and looked at Nick with hope. “Do you have any idea where he might be?”

Nick pursed his lips and shook his head. “But I’m not giving up. I just… I can’t do this officially. Someone high up with the city knows this guy, protects him. It has to be…discreet.”

John leaned back, crossing his arms across his chest. “I want to help.”

Claire grasped his arm. “John. You can’t… Do you know what that would do to Jamie if you put yourself at risk over this?”

He answered tersely, choking on guilt and helplessness. “Are we not already at risk, all of us? Randall is a madman. Certainly we have to consider that he’ll be back. How could we continue with any sense of normalcy knowing he could show up again?”

“John, I -”

“He’s right,” Nick interrupted. His voice fell to a whisper. “This guy needs to be taken out. I’m not about to let anyone get hurt, but I’d welcome a partner. The faster we find this guy, the better.” His eyes met John’s for a moment and held. Here between them was trust based on nothing more than need and instinct.

Claire glanced between them, her lips pulling into a hint of a smile. “Well, I’m not about to sit at home while you two hunt him down.”

Nick turned to her and smiled. “Wouldn’t dream of it. In fact, _you_ are exactly who I need for our first step.”

* * *

 

Jack Randall hung his suit over the bathtub to dry, watching the drops splatter on the porcelain. He’d scrubbed the blood out, meticulously running a magnifying glass over every inch of it. It would be a shame to ruin such a beautiful suit over some blood.

The apartment was no more than a cordoned-off section of the second floor of a warehouse. An iron-framed bed, a dresser, a toilet tucked behind metal sheeting. The tub and sink lined a wall in a dark corner with a single bulb hanging above. One would be forgiven for thinking Randall did not eat with no sign of food or cooking implements. His meals were usually taken at a table in the back of a bar beneath the railyard administration offices. Beef stew, red wine.

The rest of the space where he lived was occupied by crates of books. Discarded textbooks, misprints, excess inventory of unsold rejects. The boxes formed a wall, blocking most of the light from the 8-foot windows. These unwanted dust-filled tomes were his treasury. His fortune rest inside them, bills tucked in between geometry calculations and conjugated verbs. He’d amassed wealth and hoarded it, pulling open books only when he felt his body calling for a new suit.

Randall opened the bottom drawer of his dresser and pulled out work pants, a blue denim button-down, and from a shelf in the closet he retrieved a tweed newsboy cap. His skin itched as he pulled on the clothing, so rough and course compared to his suits. The unflattering cut of the trousers billowing over his worn boots. The hat he hated most of all. It made him look just like _him_.

The men unloading pallets in the warehouse paid him no mind, had no notion of who he was - nor did they care to - as he started the pickup truck and eased out into the street abutting the loading docks. His truck merged into the constant coming and going and angled for the bridge.

An hour later, after the neighborhoods had become fields and they’d stopped bothering with crossing gates across the railroad tracks, he pulled into the drive, his teeth clacking together as he rattled over the potholes. He’d need to get more gravel to fill those.

The sun hovered at the horizon, casting long shadows through the elm in the front yard. He cut the engine and sat for a moment. Randall always saw shadows in the house, drifting past the curtains, watching him through the slits of the blinds in the bedroom. _He’d_ be waiting for him inside, gathering up his fury, growing giddy with the anticipation of unleashing it.

The truck’s door rattled when he slammed it, and he imagined how good it would feel to take a baseball bat to it. He walked to the porch through the overgrown grass, long gone to seed. Scraping his finger over the peeling paint on the porch rail, he wondered if it was worth the risk to ask the neighbor’s son if he’d care to paint it for a little money.

Twisting the door knob, he eased it open inch by inch, waiting for the flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. Waiting for the hands to wrap around his throat. Silence.

God, he hated the smell of the place. The stale, mildewy reek of it. The whisky that had been spilled onto the carpet over the years somehow still crept into his nostrils to haunt him.

Jack checked the curtains, pulling them together though they’d not been moved apart in 15 years. The living room was dark and still, devoid of furniture. He opened the wooden box at the bottom of the bookshelf and removed the belt.

His breathing quickened with the first whiff of the leather, his eyes fluttering shut as his fingers traced the shape of the spade in the center of the shining silver buckle. He looked up to the clock and squinted. Four minutes.

He shed his clothes quickly but carefully, folding them neatly as he went, until he stood naked in the center of the room, belt in hand.

_5:59_

_6:00_       

The belt arced through the darkness and flattened across his back, rippling his scarred skin.

* * *

“Frank? You don’t really think... “ She sat back in the booth, her arms crossed and brow furrowed, angry at Nick for bringing him up. Angry that he was right. They had to start somewhere. And right now, the only thing they knew for sure was that Jamie’s attacker shared a last name with Claire’s ex.

John shifted uncomfortably next to her. “You don’t have to go alone. I’ll go with you, Claire. You can say I’m a private investigator. Maybe he’d be more willing to open up.”

Nick nodded enthusiastically at John’s suggestion and offered his own. “I’m happy to go, too. I know how to talk to people, to get them to share infor-”

“-Stop! I’ll go. I don’t need a bloody chaperone to see my ex-husband.” Claire’s voice sounded a good deal more confident than she looked.

Nick opened his mouth to speak but stopped short as John cleared his throat and gave a subtle head shake. _Do not push this. Don’t make her feel weak._

Nick’s voice was quiet and reassuring. “Okay. You just need to ask if he knows the name. Anyone in his family - cousins, uncles, anything. Any information you get is more than we have now so if it gets uncomfortable, you go. No worries, okay?” Claire met his eyes and her mouth turned up, a half-smile to acknowledge his vote of confidence.

“I’m going to go now. We don’t have time to waste.” She eased out of the booth and buttoned her coat. “I’ll see you back at the apartment later, John?”

“Yes. Claire…” Worry bubbled inside him. The ground they tread upon was shifting, uncertain. “Just...be careful.”

“Of course.”

* * *

 

She hadn’t been in the neighborhood in months. Not since retrieving the last box of belongings. She’d slipped in when she knew he was teaching. Filled a small box with oddities that she would not part with.

A chipped mug with a fat cat painted on it, a flea market find in nursing school. Her book of John Donne poems, a gift from her uncle. A pencil sketch drawing of a blue heron in flight that she’d purchased at a county fair when she was eighteen, not suitable for hanging on their wall, he’d said. And one last thing before she slipped out, pushing the key under the door. His bottle of expensive whisky, reserved for his most petulant moods. He’d break a dish or two over this.

She’d nearly run from the apartment, rounding the corner with curls flying behind her, into Jamie who pulled the box from her and breathed life into her lips.

Now, as street lamps turned on, casting pools of light over the grey pavement, she squeezed the fear growing in her belly. Locked it in place and pulled her shoulders back.

_Randall 312_. He hadn’t left. She knew he wouldn’t. She pushed the button and waited, running her fingers over the copper mailboxes.

“Yes?”

_Breathe._

“Frank?”

Silence. _Say something._

“Frank, it’s me. Cl-”

_Buzzzz_

The hall felt longer than she remembered. And darker. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame casually, as if he expected her to be delivering his dinner.

“I didn’t expect to be buzzed in so quickly.”

“Well. Anything that brings you to my door must be awfully interesting. I don’t think I’d survive the suspense.”

He stepped aside and waited for her to walk in. As if her heart hadn’t dropped into her gut at the sight of his face. As if she wasn’t remembering the feel of his hands wrapped tightly around her wrists. _Swallow it. Lock it up. Jamie._

“What’s the emergency?” Frank sat at the kitchen table, a half-eaten plate of pasta pushed to the middle.

She eased into a chair, cringing at the legs scraping against the floor. He waited for her to speak, his stare not unkind, but darkened by their past. “Someone was hurt by a man with the last name of Randall and I…” Her throat closed. _Ask him._ “They’re looking for a man named Jack Randall and I wondered if he was any relation. If you knew of him...anything about him.”

Frank’s brows rose, and he smiled apprehensively, befuddled. He’d not expected that. “Jack Randall? Jack… I don’t think so. Sorry.”

She shouldn’t be that disappointed. They’d known it was a long-shot. But something in her was angry at him for not knowing. She could have forgiven him something if he’d known, if he’d been able to help her find him. Replace that final bitter moment when she left with something kinder. Maybe she should be grateful he was civil.

“You’re not in danger, are you?”

“No, I… I’m sorry for bothering you.”

It was considerably darker as she left the building. Claire had never felt uneasy in the city. There was always life, always people in every direction, no matter the time. Tonight, the street was empty. Ominous. She charged ahead, anxious to get on the train, back to the apartment and out of this darkness. She was about to step into the street when she heard him.

“Claire!” Frank was running. That fact alone was enough to stop her in her tracks. _I’ve never seen him run before._

“Frank, what is it?”

He bent over, pressing a hand into his side, trying to slow his breathing. “I think I may know…who Jack Randall is.”

* * *

Guilt niggled in the back of John’s mind, like a gnat flitting over the surface of the skin, enough to tickle the hairs, but escape a slapping hand. He should have trailed her. Waited outside to see her safe from Frank’s apartment. He should have gone to see Jamie, though it was likely too late for visiting hours. He’d be seeing Jamie back to the apartment tomorrow. He felt such relief and such dread at the prospect of him filling that space again.

The restaurant had begun to fill with the dinner crowd and Nick had ordered minestrone for them. And a bottle of wine that was flooding John’s limbs with warmth an hour later.

“Did you really want to, though? Or was it just a family expectation?” The glow of the wine and a belly full of warm food brought out in John a brightness, a color to his pale skin. He found himself grinning more than he had in months. Years.

“I _did_ want to. But it wasn’t just to do what my dad did. I wasn’t really that close to him. We...didn’t see eye to eye on some things. I’m a different kind of cop than he was.” Nick’s voice trailed off.

“Was he...crooked?” John felt a bit unsure how to ask without offense.

Nick smiled. “Well, something like that. He’d cover for guys. Take things into his own hands sometimes. No, it was more he thought he was really important. That being a cop was... Like he thought he was ordained or something. He demanded respect. And he thought he had all the answers. Not a lot of room for argument with him.”

“Did _you_ argue?”

“A little. It was how he looked at me. He saw something in me that bothered him. It didn’t matter if my words were respectful. Who I was offended him.” The easy smiles had given way to rawness. The candlelight flickered in their eyes, wet and dark. “So, I wanted to be a cop who didn’t think the world needed to bend to him. Instead of cracking someone’s kneecaps because you don’t like how they walk, I wanted to be the cop who stopped the guy who did the cracking.”

“Do you? Stop them?”

Nick leaned back, his thumb rubbing the stem of the wine glass. His eyes met John’s and they held for a moment in that space. His voice was low and drowsy. “Sometimes. But they just keep coming, don’t they?”

The table near them exploded in laughter, jolting John and Nick from their trance. “I should go. I need to make sure Claire is well, see what she found out.”

“Of course. Yes.” Nick slid out of his seat and dropped some bills on the table. “I’ve got it. Thank you for...for staying and, uh, eating and…”

“My pleasure. Thank you, Nick.”

John turned to leave, and Nick grabbed his arm. “I’ll, uh, I’ll walk your direction a bit. I need to go down to Fairfax if you’re walking that way.”

John nodded and led them out. He wasn’t exactly going to Fairfax. That would take him three blocks out of the way. He was just being polite by agreeing to walk with Nick, he told himself.

They were of similar build, though John was thinner and a bit taller. Nick’s strides were long, and they fell into a rhythm, easily sliding around street vendors and slow walkers.  Their arms swung in unison and John felt a tether grow between their wrists, his knuckles brushing against Nick’s every few swings. “You live alone?”

“It’s not much. But yeah, just me. Sometimes it’s a little too quiet. Until the neighbor lady starts pounding on my door in the middle of the night because she thinks I’m making noise. I tell her it’s not me; it’s the barflies, but she doesn’t believe me.”

John laughed, imagining a bleary-eyed Nick shaking his head in confusion. He indulged himself, let the image roll around in his head for a minute. Nick’s hair sticking up in the back from the pillow, the hair on his chest peeking out from his undershirt. His legs...he could tell he had strong thighs. They stretched against the cut of his pants.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“What? I’m sorry. I just was sidetracked in my head for a minute. What were you saying?”

Nick stopped walking and John halted, turning to face him. Nick smiled and leaned against the brick warehouse building. The evening crowds had thinned, the buzz of the city growing distant. “This is where I leave you. Fairfax.”

John looked up at the street sign a few feet away and grinned. “Snuck up on me.” When he turned back to Nick he found his brown eyes dark and glistening.

“It’s a shame we met under these difficult circumstances, John. But...I...I just wanted to thank you for agreeing to help me look for this guy. I’ll stop by the apartment tomorrow when Jamie’s back and maybe we all can chat about what Claire found out, what our next moves are.” He stuck his hand out, suspended between them, waiting for John’s grasp.

His hand was warmer than John’s, his palm peppered with smooth callouses. They did not shake but held. Pressing. Waiting. “Thank you, Nick.”

The hand was gone. Nick was gone. Darting across the street. He stopped midway, just as John was turning to backtrack. “John! Hope I didn’t take you too far out of your way!” He winked and continued on his way.

_God, he winked._ John felt utterly foolish at the flush that rose through his body at that wink. He doubled his speed, energized by his goodbye with Nick and anxious to get to Claire. To hear what she’d learned.

He took the steps two at a time and slipped into the apartment. “Claire, it’s me.”

She walked out from the hall, drying her hands on a towel. He was struck by how awake she looked, vibrant even. They’d both been sallow and exhausted for the last day. A faint smile grew on her face. “John.”

“You found something?”

She nodded, her eyes wild with something. Hope maybe. “I think so.”

* * *

 

 


	6. The Story Was Not Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie comes home and the four of them learn what Frank knows about Black Jack Randall.

“Ye’d think they’ve never seen a man wi’ a busted-up face before.” Jamie pulled the brim of his hat lower, dipping his head at the stares of oncoming pedestrians. The stitches were unpleasant, but the bruising was what captured their attention. Mottled hues of purple and yellowish-green across his forehead, his nose, and around his eyes. His skin was tender, and the hat irritated him, adding another layer of pain to what he’d already been enduring. 

His hand, held up against his chest, was wrapped tightly in bandages. The wounds would need to heal before any more work could be done on the bones. It was splinted and secured and throbbed incessantly, so he’d never forget its fragile state.

His back was stitched and bandaged to keep it from rubbing against his clothes. With each step the skin pulled at the stitches, the tissue inside straining against itself, sending waves of pain through his back. He was sweating by the time they’d gotten on the train. Cursing his own weakness.

Claire had suggested a car and he’d refused, hating the thought of stop-and-start jostling and a seat back pressing into him. She leaned into him as they clung to the bar to steady themselves as the train rolled into the next stop. “What do you think they’re thinking, about what happened to you?”

“That clumsy fool either fell down a flight of stairs or that beautiful, but rather intimidating lass wi’ him laid him out for not puttin’ down the toilet seat.”

“Oh, really? Well, I think I know what scenario is most likely.”

His head was bent low to hers and he laughed into her ear. Their smiles ached against skin that had not moved that way in too long. The lightness of laughing together sent endorphins through them, a momentary indulgence with the other side of their humanity, the part of them not chased by dark memories.

They walked slowly to their street, keeping to the quieter side streets. He’d not asked her to slow her pace, but she noted his labored breath, the paleness of his skin.

“Is John all right?” he asked pensively. They’d had the short time together in the hospital, but he worried about him. While Jamie lived with the memories of the attack and the pain of the recovery, he knew what it was like to see someone you care about in pain. And for every time he’d found John nearly unconscious in a corner of that hellish den, it could not compare to John seeing his flesh torn open. To see violence from another’s hand on him. With all of John’s demons, this could be devastating.

“John is… Well, he can’t be all right. I know he feels guilt. But he’s found an outlet I think, a way to channel his worries and trauma. He’s thrown himself into trying to find your attacker. He’s working with Nick. They’ve spent a lot of time together already. I think they’re quite fond of each other.”

Jamie looked at her, trying to read what she meant by that. “That quickly?”

She tilted her head, raising an eyebrow. “You, of all people, should know that things can happen quite quickly.”

He grasped her hand and pulled her with him against the brick facade, just outside their building. She was careful not to press into his broken hand, but pushed in as close as she could, missing the nearness of his body.

Jamie released her hand and pushed the stray curls back from her face, settling his hand on the back of her neck. “Do ye think it’s possible to love someone just as ye’ve met them? I dinna ken the word for it. Love is something more perhaps, coming only with knowing someone. But I felt something right away when ye fixed my shoulder that night. I felt as though ye’d reached into my chest and gasped my heart in yer hands, but gentle, like cradling a bairn. I knew, as certain as my own mind, that I wished for ye to hold my heart forever. I trusted ye before I knew why. How is that?”

She let her head fall back into his hand, let him steady her for a moment as she focused on every point of contact where his warm skin touched hers. “How did I trust _you_? I’ve thought so often of that night and sometimes I feel like there was a tear in the world and we slipped through into another place where we forgot what the world had done to us. Was I just so tired that I’d lost the strength to hold up my defenses? I don’t know… It seems more than that. It wasn’t usual, was it?”

“Hmmph. No. Still isn’t.”

He met her lips gently and lingered, tasting her and remembering every kiss they’d shared since meeting.

His smile upon parting was warm, but she saw in his eyes the pain, pressing against the surface.

“Let’s get you home.”

* * *

 

He couldn’t say why there was fear in his gut as he opened the door to his apartment. There shouldn’t be. This was home. This was safe. Perhaps it was the idea of returning to normalcy, when normal had been upended. He couldn’t breeze into the room and hoist Claire onto the counter as he loved to. He couldn’t button his own trousers without assistance, let alone lift someone.

He was weak and tired and broken. And the job that was keeping them all afloat was nothing more than a question mark. No one had heard from Dougal. The doors to the shop were locked.

Walking in, his fears were allayed by the scent that curled into his nostrils and carried him to the dining room where John had laid out a beautiful meal. Roasted carrots, baked chicken, and creamed spinach. It smelled impossibly good and were he healed, he’d have lifted his friend off his feet in thanks.

“Welcome home, Jamie.”

“You spoil me, John.”

“Well, you haven’t tasted it yet.”

They smiled easily and the little domestic scene they’d played out kept reality away just a little longer. Jamie eased into a chair at the end of the table and reached for the platter of chicken. Claire swooped in before him and pulled the platter to her, slicing into the thigh and depositing it on his plate.

His hand squeezed his fork until his knuckles grew white. “I can get my own food.” He’d not meant to sound so angry. But the pressure was building beneath his surface, hissing through any cracks, demanding release.

She sat in the chair to his left and gently laid the knife on the table. “I know. I just… It can be difficult to cut your food without the use of both hands, so I thought I’d help. I should have asked, though. I wouldn’t want to belittle you in any way. Ever. I’m sorry -”

“- Claire. Stop.” The moment the words emerged from her he knew he’d nicked a vein. Jamie had never heard her speak like this, with this tone. Almost like she was reciting a memorized list of apologies to an aggrieved man. _Explain your reasoning logically. Apologize for failing to defer. Assure it was unintended. Apologize again._ It came from her so lifelessly, like a cashier asking if you found everything you were looking for the thousandth time in a day. She didn’t look at him while she spoke, just stared through her own hands, tensed on the table.

“Ye did nothing wrong, Claire. It’s...it’s just me. I ken ye only wished to help. I’m sorry for speaking sharply.”

John shrunk into his seat, willing himself to not so much as breathe audibly until this moment had passed.

Claire looked at Jamie as if she’d just woken from a dream. Her eyes focusing as the realization of what she’d done, where she’d allowed herself to go, dawned on her. He grasped her hand and rubbed his thumb gently over the soft skin. A reassuring smile.

John cleared his throat. “We have much to talk about. Nick will be coming by tonight to talk about what’s happening, to plan our next steps. We should eat and relax while we can. I’m sure you’re exhausted, Jamie.”

They spoke sparingly and of subjects domestic and mundane during the meal. All their strength saved for the meeting with Nick. He arrived an hour after dinner had finished, ascending from the streets where the twilight had faded into blackness and the fuzzy glow of street lights were swallowed by fog.

He was welcomed in by John, smiling wide with eyes alight, his hands warm and eager to guide him in. Claire finished cleaning in the kitchen, popping her head into the hall for a quick hello. Jamie lie curled on his side on the sofa, long legs wedged against the arm. Having finished his meal, he’d fallen fast asleep shortly after moving to the quiet shadows of the living room.

Nick kept his voice at a whisper.  “How is he?”

John glanced at Jamie’s slumbering form. “Healing. He has a strong spirit. But he carries a new weight now, having his attacker still out there.”

“And you?” Nick’s gaze was direct and soft, having slipped the bonds of pleasantries.

“Happy you’re here...to hear what Claire has found out.”

Claire brought tea to the living room and poured some for each, saving an empty mug for Jamie should he wake. “I’m back to work tomorrow so I should probably forego the fun drinks tonight. Sorry.”

Nick smiled. “This is perfect. There’s a chill out there.” He sipped a little, burning his tongue despite his efforts. “Let’s hear it then. Unless you think we should wake Jamie.”

“No. Let him sleep. I can fill him in later.”

Claire spoke slowly, mentally walking herself through the visit to Frank’s, not wanting to miss any detail. Telling the story, she felt distant from it. Merely describing a character in a scene.

Nick leaned forward, teetering on the edge of the armchair, leg bouncing with the excitement of having something - anything - to work with. “Did he seem upset or worried or...anything in particular when he ran to you?”

She stared into her tea, trying to conjure his demeanor in her mind. “No... nothing stands out. Not right away. As he began to tell me, he did change. Fear. There was fear in his voice. The things he was recounting to me had obviously affected him deeply.”

Nick set his mug on the coffee table, emptied to the last drop. “Tell us. Who does he think Jack Randall is?”

She looked to Jamie and found his eyes looking back at her, drowsy, but alert. He was too exhausted to ask questions, but he needed to hear the answers. Needed to know this man wasn’t a ghost.

“When Frank was fourteen, his parents sent him out of the city for the summer. They thought he was falling in with the wrong types, I guess. He wasn’t, of course. If you knew him, you’d know how absurd that idea was. But Frank’s father was...harsh. He was always looking for excuses to punish him and I think his mother wanted to spare him a little of that.”

Claire looked around at their expectant faces, wondering how any of this could ever find resolution. If Jamie himself tracked Randall down and took him out, would they ever feel free? Would they be trailed by ghosts into old age?

“Frank’s father had a brother who lived outside of the city, maybe an hour or so. Where it turns to farmland. His brother had a son two years older than Frank. His name was John. Frank said he went by ‘Johnnie’. I think it seemed like a fun idea to him, being free in the country with his cousin for a summer. They’d have to work at his uncle’s farm implement, of course. Cleaning up and running errands. Delivering parts to farms.”

John leaned forward, dipping his head into her line of vision. “He thinks it’s his cousin? This Johnnie?”

“Just...let me finish. I don’t want to forget anything.”

Jamie’s voice croaked from the dark corner of the sofa, startling them all. “Go ahead, Claire.”

She thanked him with a hint of a smile. “He said it was...an unusual home. So quiet. And he soon found out why. His uncle was not unlike Frank’s father. Quick tempered. But something more… Menacing. He said he’d look at you like he wanted you to screw up, so he’d have an excuse to throttle you.

“Johnnie never spoke to his father, just answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’, never looked at him. Being in the house with the three of them, he said, was terrible. But outside it wasn’t all bad. He did get to enjoy the countryside with his cousin. They explored, shot at cans, ran around destroying things like boys do.”

Nick leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “So, this guy had an asshole dad. How does he end up carving people up?” He realized as the words came out how insensitive that must sound and nodded apologetically to Jamie, who paid him no mind.

Claire shook her head. “No, there’s more he told me. Frank said that Johnnie had to be back home every night for dinner at a certain time. It was very strict, you couldn’t be a minute late. And they were always back, except one afternoon he said they’d been fishing and had cut it too close. They ran as fast as they could, but they weren’t going to make it. They stopped in the front yard and he said Johnnie just stood there, staring at the house. And he saw his uncle looking through the gap in the curtains at them.

“Finally, they went to the front door and he said as soon as Johnnie opened it, his uncle grabbed him and drug him into the living room. Threw him to the floor.”

Claire’s eyes fell closed and she swallowed the bile creeping up her throat. _How do you feel pity, outrage even, for the man who nearly murdered Jamie?_ The room around her was still, silent save their ragged breaths and the ticking clock. She continued.

“Frank said that Johnnie got up from the floor and took off his shirt, then his pants. He folded them neatly and set them on the floor. Johnnie’s mother never left the kitchen. She stood in there stirring a pot, never so much as flinching. His father got a belt and began to beat him, but not… He said it was unrestrained, wild. Full of rage. And Johnnie’s back was full of scars, tiny lines. The backs of his legs, too. He turned the belt around and beat him with the buckle so the skin broke. Frank said that Johnnie never made a sound but had to grip the edge of a chair to stay upright. Then it was over. He got dressed and they sat at the table to eat. His mother didn’t allow Johnnie any food, so he watched the others eat and then they went to bed. Never said a word about any of it.”

“Jesus Christ.” John’s face was red, flush with anger and disgust and a burning rage at his own father. At all the fathers who practiced at forging monsters of their babies.

“The next day, they’d gone walking along the edge of a field and Frank said that Johnnie stopped suddenly and turned to him, looked at him with a face exactly like his father’s. It was cold and menacing.”

Jamie floated above them as Claire spoke, stretched himself against the ceiling looking down on their morbid scene. The very telling of this story was grotesque, like washing in blood. The need for explanation, for blame, so deeply embedded in their humanity. But what is the explanation for the inhumane? If his father had merely slapped him for his insubordination, would the monster still seethe under the surface? If his mother had interfered? If Frank had gotten the same treatment, would he have murdered Claire instead of merely terrorizing her?

His ear itched against the fabric of the sofa and her words crawled into his brain.

“He said Johnnie spoke to him, without inflection, almost sounding bored. He said, ‘I’ll kill them both soon. I want to cut them, but I think I need to be clever about it.’ Frank said he talked about how his mother was Scottish. He called her uneducated and filthy. That she whored herself to his father and he bought her. Called her a mindless sow who merely watched stupidly while his father played savage. He called them weak. That only the weak rage or cower in kitchens.”

Jamie pushed himself up, gasping at the pain flaring at his back. His voice was ragged and rough from disuse. “Home. If his demons were born there, he’ll battle them there.”

Nick drew pulled himself forward, his fingers wrapping around the chair’s arms. He nodded at Jamie. “We find his home, we find him.”

The air in the room hung heavy with the words of Frank’s story, hovering in their faces, curling ‘round their ears. But the story was not over. They would tell the next part themselves.


	7. I Will Not Forgive You If You Leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie has an unexpected and disturbing encounter, John and Nick continue their search for Black Jack and grow closer.  
> NSFW

“You’re sure about this, Jamie?” Claire peeled back an edge of the bandage over his stitches, wincing as his tender skin stuck to it. Not infected. She secured it again and pulled his shirt over his shoulder, buttoning it slowly, enjoying the feel of his eyes on her. 

“I’m sure I’ll go mad if I spend another day cooped up in this flat.” 

She smoothed his collar, claiming these moments before reality swept her away. Tucking loose curls of his hair back behind his ears, she flicked invisible bits of dander off his shoulder and his mouth quirked up at her ministrations. 

“Do I look presentable enough to nab a seat at the diner? They’ll no’ think me a ruffian?”

Her hands lingered on his face, thumbs rubbing circles on his temples. “Well, at worst they’ll think you an unlucky ruffian. Perhaps they’ll take pity on you and offer a discount.”

She kissed his lips and his hand grasped her sleeve, holding her in place for a moment. He felt like half his body was encased in cement, his movements hampered and slow, and every impulse to pull her down to the bed with him deterred by the pulsing ache of his injuries.

She bent to tie his shoes and his thoughts lingered on that word. Pity. She’d meant it only in jest, but it stirred a dark feeling in his gut. His revulsion to that word was born deep in his soul, grown through generations, cultivated through the history of his homeland. He could not bear that someone would look at his broken body and pity him. 

Jamie had come from a long line of proud Scots who suffered indignities, broken bodies, broken hearts, but they would not suffer pity. They persevered. Only the cruelties of nature would claim them, not other men.

Claire threw her coat over her shoulders and paused at the door. “Please don’t be out long. I understand why you need to, but it worries me that no one will be here should you need anything. I don’t know when John and Nick will be finished digging through records, and I doubt I’ll be able to get off my shift early.”

“Claire. I… I’ll be mindful. Dinna fash. Go.”

His hips ached as he stretched his long legs over rough pavement, wet stones slipping under his soles. Lying prone for days at odd angles to favor his back had left him twisted and sore and he relished the chance to wake his muscles from their slumber, though he was certain he’d feel otherwise by day’s end.

Jamie kept his head low, self-conscious of the bruising and stitches. An old woman drew back under the awning of her brownstone as he passed, scurrying up the steps. He didn’t let it touch him too deeply. It was a morbid curiosity that grew inside most, to know what devil had their way with him. To imagine the gruesome duel, a living pulp novel. He, the vengeful anti-hero.

The river beckoned. Waters high from rain and rushing madly through the locks, it carved through the city with urgent disregard. Its desperation to be swallowed by the ocean made him feel as if he were an insect. If the wind caught him right he might catch the current and float home.

Home. He’d painted a portrait in his mind of home. His highlands, storming skies cutting down life, heather swallowing the dead. The beauty of the place wedged in the creases of his eyes, trying to work its way into his vision again, and he fought it with concrete and brick and steel and belching exhaust.

Jamie eased past the grease-smudged laborers loading barrels on trucks, hoisting them with wiry arms slick with sweat. His stomach grumbled and he considered his route to the nearest diner, still a good four long blocks. He slipped into an alley to bypass the traffic and felt the air shift behind him, a body big enough to alter the wind that had been snapping at his neck. He slowed and listened for steps and his heart thundered in his ears. He couldn’t fight, couldn’t properly brandish a weapon in his state. What would the knife feel like this time?

A heavy hand roughly grabbed his shoulder, easily spinning him round and pushing him against the brick wall. He gasped as his tender skin met the brick and his eyes wildly scanned the ground for a bit of broken glass. He’d let his legs fall out beneath him, grasp the glass and drive it into the man’s groin. He’d run and damn the stitches. _Do it now! Fall!_

“Lad!” Dougal’s breath stung his eyes, soured with whisky and desperation. A hat hung low over his eyes and a scarf wrapped tightly over half his face. It was obnoxiously conspicuous. “Jamie, my lad. You can’t imagine what a relief it is to see you walkin’ these parts after I heard what had happened.”

Had he that glass shard now…

“Dougal. What are ye doin’ here, man? Ye canna be walkin’ up behind me like that!”

Dougal’s eyes darted back and forth, never resting on Jamie’s face more than a few seconds. “I dinna have much time. Look… I am deeply regretful that ye were caught in the middle of my business. Yer mam would see me hanged if she knew. I want to make it right.”

“Hmmph. Right? Do ye see how that might sound to me?”

“I do. I canna undo it. But I’ll not leave ye wi’ no means.”

He pushed an envelope into Jamie’s hands, wrapped with string. Jamie opened it uneasily and shook his head at the stack of bills. “What are ye playin’ at?”

“If I pay him back...and then some, I believe he’ll let ye be. Let ye open the shop, get things runnin’ again. You act quickly and we’ll not have lost all our business.”

“Why me? And whatever are ye doin’ going to such a man in the first? The capital was solid. I’m sure of it.”

Dougal shifted, scrunching his nose and shaking his head. “Lad, I… it wasna for the business. I was lookin’ to grow the money to send home. To send for the cause. It’s growin’ strong if we can secure the funds. I had it… I had thousands and I got greedy thinkin’ I could use Black Jack to double, maybe triple it. Christ, I lost nearly all of it!”

Jamie eyed the envelope again, trying to understand. “What is this then?”

“All I have left. There’s a safe, tucked behind the tool board in the office. The combination is 4 16 17 46. There’ll be enough in there, if you add this to it, to cover what I owe him and a bit more. I need ye to get the money and put it in an envelope on the desk. Just leave it there. I’ll make sure he hears of it. When it’s done, I’ll send word to Rupert and he’ll get the machines up. It’ll be tight, but you finish a couple jobs and push our contracts, ye’ll pull through.”

“And why is it I need to do this for ye? Why is it _I_ must walk into that place again while ye scurry like a rat through alleys?”

“Ye’re family. I trust ye, Jamie. And I… I canna be seen around there. He’ll not stop until he has me, Jamie. I know that.”

“And what makes you think he won’t be waiting for me? To finish me?”

“He’s had ye. He took what he wanted from ye. His eye’s on me. I can feel it, creepin’ up my neck. I have to disappear for a bit. Maybe more than a bit.”

“Dougal…”

Dougal grasped his hand and pulled it against his chest, his eyes shining. “Ye’ll not let me down, lad.” He dropped Jamie’s hand and ducked into a doorway, disappearing into the shadows.

Jamie stuffed the envelope into his coat, turned back toward the docks and slapped his good hand against the brick, dragging the pads of his fingers over the rough wall, gasping for breath.

* * *

 

John’s eyes crossed, unfocused, for the third time in the last ten minutes and he shook his head to center himself. The single light hanging from the ceiling over their table cast long shadows over the stacked folders and township and range plat maps.

Nick was hunched over one such map across the table, his hair hanging limply over his brow, having lost all shape from repeatedly being pushed back. The basement air was thick with heat from the boiler one room over, the smell of the room a mix of mildew and paint. He’d rolled his sleeves up and sweat dripped from his temple onto his forearm. John watched the droplet. Imagined the taste on his tongue.

Nick looked up and caught John’s gaze, smiling back at him. “I’m going to pass out if I don’t get out of this fucking dungeon.”

John smiled. “We should have nicked the fan from that woman at the desk.”

“Oh John. You’ve never nicked something before, have you? I can’t see it.”

No, he couldn’t see it. Couldn’t imagine John whimpering outside the doors of men who had pushed him out before their wives returned. Smashing the vases in his parents’ foyer to give them something tangible to hate him for. Tying cherry stems with his tongue to get the attention of the la crosse captain who later stumbled with him into the deepest shadows behind the fraternity.

“I’ve done a great many things, Nick. Only _you_ limit your imagination.”

His smile fell and Nick’s lips parted slightly. Enough for John to see his tongue drawing along his teeth. Nick closed the maps and pushed it to the center of the table, his eyes never leaving John’s. “I need a bath.”

John folded the paper where he’d written all the names and addresses of Randalls and tucked it into his coat, following Nick out.

Their feet blurred over pavement, swiftly navigating, dancing and stuttering their strides to maintain their pace toward Nick’s apartment. At Fairfax, Nick paused, his foot hovering over the sewer grate before he leaned forward to cross the street. John stepped off the curb and looked at Nick’s bemused face.

“I’ll walk a bit more with you, if that’s all right. Air feels good after that basement.”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “It feels really good.”

Nick’s building was three and a half blocks up a quiet street dotted with honeylocusts. Grandmothers watered the window plants, nodding at Nick and John as they passed. An old neighborhood continuing to sing its own song.

John followed him up the steps and they faced each other, shifting their weary frames foot-to-foot. Nick opened his mouth to speak, wrapping his hand around the door handle. “If you -”

John cut him off. “-Did you, um, did you want the list of names or should I keep that, and we’ll meet up tomorrow evening?”

“Naw, you keep it, John. I need to let it all sit in my mind tonight. Sometimes I need to give my brain time to sort through things without direction. Hopefully I’ll come up with an angle so we’re not just wandering in the dark in our search.”

“Right. Good. I’ll be in touch tomorrow then. Good night, Nick.”

“Good night, John.”

Names spoken as carefully as kisses, they parted on the steps and John directed his stride toward the river. Walking to the water, he thought of his own body, its rhythms and strength, its bloody current a pulsing murmur in his ear. His breath caught in a gust of wind and he wrapped his hands around the cold iron railing keeping him from falling into the water.

His vision narrowed on the water lapping against the embankment, against the curves of Nick’s torso. The water cascading over the rocks along the docks, cascading over Nick’s forehead, rivulets separating around his nose, catching on the curve of his lips, pooling there until he tilts his head back and the water rolls down his cheeks.  The water skimming over a log, skimming over Nick’s adam’s apple, bobbing up as he swallows.

Longing wended through the landscape of John’s mind, transforming the elements of life into lust, until the air itself was made of the breath he desired. His own body had gone taut and blazing and he must throw himself into the river or let it consume him.

The door to the building was wedged open with a stick and he ascended the stairs, his feet following Nick’s invisible footprints until he knew the door he stood at was the one. He knew. He knocked.

Senses heightened, like an animal attuned to its prey, he heard the wet suction of feet against wood floors. The curious breath held as Nick peers through at him, fish-eyed and distant. The locks clicking and sliding.

“John.”

A slow dance backward for Nick, forward for John. His coat, his hat. He toed off his shoes and finally looked up. Maybe he’d seen when Nick first ushered him in, but it feels suddenly so close and so real. The towel wrapped around his hips. Drops of bath water falling from his hair, blazing a trail down his torso, catching on his chest. The hair on his stomach curls together making a dark line down his center, disappearing below the towel.

He’s gone suddenly, his body swallowed by the shadows of the hallway. John followed slowly, staring at the odd intimacy of his socks sliding over this floor for the first time. The bedroom was dim, shadows cast from a bedside lamp with a crooked shade. Nick sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders slumped. His uncertainty took John’s breath and he wanted to fall to his knees.

Leaning against the door, he lowered his head, like an animal showing submission. “I will leave if you wish.”

Nick’s breath huffed out, a half-laugh, half-cry. “I will not forgive you if you leave.” His eyes were bright, heavy with emotion. “Do you ever wish you could just say… just…” His throat tightened, and he rubbed at it, as if he could massage the choking emotions away. “Just to say what you’re thinking. What you’re feeling. And maybe doing that would change everything for you. If you could just...say it.”

The words lodged in his throat and John pressed a shaking hand to his own chest. “Every day of my life.”

Nick stood, a small, nervous smile on his lips. “Come here.”

John felt the flush rise up his body. His ears burned. His feet moved whether or not he willed them, pulled to Nick until he was no more than a few inches from him, their breaths shaking and whispering over each other’s faces.

“I trust you. I don’t... I don’t trust anyone, John. But I trust you. I feel like whatever walls I have, you walked through them like they were invisible, like they were never meant to keep you out in the first place. And I don’t know how to do this, but I don’t want you to leave.” The words rushed from him and his body’s shape changed, hardened. Blood rushed to his face, not from embarrassment, but from the surge of adrenaline, the heady mix of vulnerability and arousal.

John’s hands itched at his side. He dug them into his thighs, restraining them from reaching for him. A smile bloomed on his face, coaxing wetness from his eyes. “I don’t want to leave. You see me, Nick. You see me and do not recoil and demand or disregard. And that feels like a gift.”

Nick’s hand crossed the small space between them, resting gently on John’s chest. He eased a finger in the gap between buttons and met skin. The tiniest touch, a spark. John inched forward until his mouth just barely touched Nick’s and Nick whispered against him.

“I trust you.”

Their lips pressed together hard at first, then softening, nipping at each other until John’s tongue gained entry and all restraint was abandoned. Nick’s hands pulled at John’s shirt, freeing it from his pants and running his hands, warm and soft from his bath, up John’s back, leaving marks wherever they touched.

_I trust you._ The words ran through John’s mind. _Slow down. Be certain._ “Do you want me to stop? Tell me to stop at any moment and I will.”

“What?” Nick pulled back, chest heaving.

“I will never make you do something you don’t wish to do.” John had not always been given that assurance himself. The thought of Nick feeling that way, being forced…

Nick shook his head and ran his hand down John’s chest. “I know. Can we get you undressed now? I’m a bit ahead of you.”

Nick swallowed John’s grin, deftly removed his pants, running his hand over the front of his boxers, gently grasping him through the fabric. John’s groan reverberated off Nick’s lips. To have hands touch you for want of you, this romantic notion had been nothing more than a daydream when his head wasn’t shrouded in darkness. But in his dreams he never imagined how different it would feel, to have affection accompany this act.

Before Nick could make another move, John pulled his underwear and socks off, kicking them aside to stand completely bare before him. Nick stepped back and stared at him with a mix of awe and pulsing desire. John pulled at the towel and it dropped to the floor, leaving nothing between them.

Their bodies pressed together, trapping them both, dizzy. John kissed down Nick’s neck and back up to his ear where he whispered, “I want to take you in my mouth. May I?”

Nick’s teeth bit lightly on John’s shoulder, his body shaking. “Yes.”

Falling back together, they forgot themselves. Their muscles twined together, clawing and twisting like roots seeking purchase. The heat of John’s mouth drowned out his other senses and Nick dug his fingers into the mattress to ground himself, laughing at his own desperation.

Nick’s breathing, his hitches and groans, went straight to John’s cock and he felt himself aching deep inside. Nick hissed at the coolness as John crawled up, bracing himself on shaky arms, drunk on the air between them. He leaned down and kissed him, his fingers scraping over his stubble, pulling at flesh.

Grasping and kneading his behind, Nick stretched John, arched against him, and flipped them over with ease until he knelt above him, chest heaving. He wrapped his hand around John and closed his eyes, suddenly paralyzed by this, by the manifestation of want and hope in something so simple.  He opened his eyes and leaned over, pulling a small jar out of the bedside table drawer. The oil was cool and Nick shivered at first touch, warming quickly with the movement of John’s hands, as his own matched John’s rhythm.

John stilled him. “Have you?”

A small shake of Nick’s head, an uncertain furrow to his brow.

“I want you to.”

With a nod, Nick tilted John’s legs up, bracing his arms beneath them and slowly pressed into him, both gasping and groaning.

The slowness was excruciating, gentle, and the sounds of their bodies together, their breaths ragged and gasping, were sounds John had only heard in his dreams. He knew it could be beautiful. He’d hoped. Nick’s eyes squeezed shut and he could see him trying to hold himself, trying not to instantly fall apart.

A prickling sensation began building deep in John, flashing and pulsing with each movement. In. Out. Gasping. There. He wrapped his hand around himself and shuddered as Nick’s eyes flew open, crying his name into the silent walls of the bedroom. They came together, two men clinging to the certainty of their hearts. Armored to the world, yielding to each other, and unceasingly hopeful.


	8. He Said My Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick meets with Frank to try to figure out another mystery. Claire has a disturbing encounter at the hospital.

Nick thumbed through the files in the grey metal cabinet. Randall, Alexander. Randall, Franklin, Randall, Jonath-

“-knows me! If you’ll just -”

“He collared you and you think I’m gonna let you in like you’re pals. You think I’m stupid?”

Through the open door, Nick could see the officer had squared himself against John. He took a fistful of his jacket in hand and shoved John backward into the edge of the check-in desk. Nick slammed the drawer shut, entirely forgetting his task, as he watched John being pushed around by the officer. His pulse raced and his fists clenched.

John caught himself from falling backward and spied Nick through the open door. “There! He’s right there. Just ask him.” He pointed at Nick and the officer followed the gesture, turning around to see Nick staring at them.

He smiled mirthlessly. “This your boy, Nicky? What are you gonna do? Or do I get to play with him?” He grabbed John’s wrist, twisting it until he gasped in pain.

Nick’s heart cracked through his ribs, beating wild and furious. Sweat and stuttering breath and fiery anger overwhelmed him. He’d destroy him. Beat him senseless. Nick opened his mouth to yell “stop” and nothing came out. A pathetic squeak, like a mouse cornered. He screamed at his legs to move, but they stayed rooted to the floor, encased in concrete. John’s eyes were pleading and tear-filled. _Don’t let this happen._

The fire alarm broke his trance, it’s jarring ring startling everyone in the office. All heads turned to the bell on the wall, staring at it as if waiting for it to explain itself. No one moved. No one breathed.

“The phone. Nick, your phone is ringing.”

John nudged Nick’s shoulder increasingly harder until Nick finally woke with a gasp, rolling away from John’s touch. “I’m sorry...sorry...”

“The phone,” John yawned.

Nick shuffled down the dark hall, holding himself up with an arm braced on the wall. He was dizzy from the rush of blood to his head and confused, waking so suddenly from his dream.

“H’lo?”

“Nick? It’s Claire. I’m sorry to wake you but John didn’t come home and we’re worried. Do you know where he might be?”

“Oh. God, I’m sorry, Claire. He’s fine. He...he stayed here. He’s fine. We should have thought to call. He’s good. He’s fine.”

He could swear he heard her smile on the other end.

“Well, that’s a relief. I know he’s safe with you.”

“Oh course. He’s fi-”

“-fine. Yes, you mentioned that a few times. Sorry again about waking you. I hope you can get some sleep.”

“You too, Claire. Goodnight.”

Claire set the phone back on its cradle and pulled her robe closed to ward off the draft in the hall. Jamie was propped up in bed on one elbow, waiting to hear news of John.

“Well, you were right. He may have found cozier accommodations with Nick.”

Jamie smirked. “Ah now pay up.”

“We didn’t bet money.”

“I’ll accept kisses as payment.” He pointed to his lips, puckering them invitingly.

“Oh well, you’re about to be a rich man, Fraser.”

She shed her robe and crawled to him, carefully bracing herself over him, the hem of her nightgown gathered at her thighs. She dotted his face with kisses and then fell upon his lips, savoring his warm mouth. Her fingers traced the lines of his face. His stubbled, sculpted jaw. His sharp nose, still tender from its abuse. His ear lobes, dusted with soft hairs that reminded her of a newborn.

His face had anchored her these months as the storm of her life raged. She found her own strength by tethering to his. Now she wondered, had he lost his mooring? Did she have the strength to hold him afloat through this?

Rising, she pulled him to with her and brought his hand to her center. He would claim something of himself inside her. They had learned that from the start, that they each contained something that belonged to the other, held and given, over and over. He needed it now, more than ever, for he had lost pieces of himself in the violation of the attack. He’d spilled onto the ground and the gouges had filled with self-doubt. He needed what she held of him inside her body, to find his strength again.

She shuddered as his fingers slid over her, inside her. Regaining just enough of her faculties, she pulled him free and eased onto him as he groaned into her neck.

They took from each other, gave to each other, until nothing was lost, only changed.

Hours later, in the dim glow of impending dawn Jamie rose and drifted down the hall to his jacket draped over the back of a chair. The bulky envelope tucked in the pocket pulled one side of the jacket down awkwardly with its weight.

Yesterday he’d stood across the street as the sun set on the windows of the shop, washing the brick in orange. His hand pulsed. His body knew. Every inch of him prickled in awareness.

How could he walk in there as if it wasn’t a prison? As if he hadn’t bled into the cracks of the concrete floor? Could he walk to the tools hanging on the wall of the office and not vomit at the sight of the missing mallet? Could he ever sit in the chair where he was held down? It was madness to even be near the place, contemplating it.

His chest was slick with sweat and he smelled the fear seeping through his pores. _He broke me._

* * *

 

It was completely reckless. _Is this what it is like to be in love? Risking your career, your life, for a kiss in the putrid steam venting out the back of a restaurant?_ Walking briskly through the halls of the precinct, Nick held his hand over his mouth, pretending to cough as others walked by just to hide the smile that kept breaking out on his face. _What a fool._

His dream played over in his mind and he found himself checking every file cabinet in the place for Randalls. No Alexander. _Where did that come from?_

The assumption at the precinct was that Nick had done the right thing. He’d let the case drop. It would remain unsolved. Some guy getting mixed up with bad guys. Not a murder so not a problem. He had new cases to look at, clear-cut as they were. A domestic. A bum, likely gutted over drugs. It was paperwork and courthouse calls and drudgery. And welcome cover for him to keep investigating Randall on the side. He grabbed his hat and strode past the desks with no one bothering to even glance up.

Frank Randall’s office was in a grey stone building, one of the university’s older ones. There was a grand charm to it, not the staid banality of brick that seemed to be the way of all new buildings. Nick had called the history department to get Frank’s schedule and crossed his fingers he’d find him here. And that he’d be amenable to talking.

Nick’s hand hovered over the door, slightly ajar, stopped before his knuckles met wood by a deep, gruff voice from inside.

“Enter.”

Nick entered the small, but tidy office with his hand extended, and a confident smile on his face. Not what Frank was expecting.

“Professor Randall. I’m Detective Fitzgibbon. I need just a few minutes of your time if I may.”

Frank shook his hand and nodded to the chair, a wary expression falling over his face. He stood and closed the office door.

“An Irish cop. How novel.” Frank’s leather chair squeaked as he sat back, folding his hands in his lap. “Questions about my esteemed family?”

“I was wondering if you knew of an Alexander Randall.”

Frank’s eyes narrowed, flitting over the paperwork on his desk as he searched his memory. “I knew of an Alex Randall. Never met him though. He was my cousin’s younger brother. But he died.”

“Younger brother? So he wasn’t there when you were there for the summer?”

“No. He’d died prior to that time.”

“Do you know how he died?”

_Frank lounged on the wooden pallet, his head resting on a wad of greasy rags as he flipped through the comic book. The sun was slanting through the open door, casting a sharp beam directly across his chest, warming him. Johnnie had told him to stay back in the storage shed while he finished sorting the parts from a tear-down at the implement and he happily obliged._

_His back ached from the angle and he stretched, looking very much like a cat. As he arched he noticed a tool box tucked under a storage shelf against the wall. It was small and shoved far underneath. Completely hidden to anyone not lying on the floor._

_Frank crawled over and pulled it out. Flipping open the rusty top he found some postcards with naked women on them. They were worn and bent, but he took a few moments to appreciate them, nervously glancing at the door every few seconds. Something else was in it, wrapped in a small towel. He unwrapped it to find a toy airplane, no bigger than his hand. It had rusted a bit, and had some scratches on it, but didn’t seem particularly old. Why would Johnnie keep some old toy in here?_

_Frank put everything back as he found it and resumed reading the comic. A short while later Johnnie returned._

_“Let’s get out of here.”_

_Johnnie led him down a trail that veered away from the fields and into the woods a half mile from their home. He’d not taken Frank into the woods before, but the trail was clear enough to indicate someone used it on occasion. The underbrush was dense, and thorns snagged on their pants, burrs clinging to them as they trudged through._

_He could hear the creek before he saw it. It wasn’t big by any means, maybe ten feet across, but deeper than he expected. Recent rains had added some depth and the water had carved into the bank, leaving it muddy and loose._

_The two boys stood at the edge, watching the water carry away leaves and twigs._

_“That was my brother’s airplane.”_

_Frank thought he might vomit. The guilt and fear of being caught, of having no idea someone was watching, tossed his stomach in circles. His instinct was to cry. To plead forgiveness. His father would have taken a strap to him and his body tensed at the thought, having seen what that meant in Johnnie’s home._

_But Johnnie’s words weren’t angry. They sounded almost bored, devoid of emotion. He nudged a large rock loose from the mud and picked it up. Frank’s heart lodged in his throat and he quickly considered the best direction to run._

_The rock splashed into the creek and sunk quickly, evidence of its entry gone almost instantly with the current._

“He said that’s where Alex died. I don’t know if he drowned or some other kind of accident...I don’t... I didn’t ask. I didn’t say anything.”

Nick leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs, running his thumb over the brim on his hat. “Do you have any idea what happened to your aunt and uncle? If they stayed in the home, if they passed? Any idea where the home is? I know it’s been a long time.”

Frank glanced at the clock on the wall and began pulling together folders and papers. “I’m sorry. I really need to leave for my next class.”

Nick stood and leaned across the desk, his hand over the folders. “I need to find his home, where he grew up. I don’t have much to go on and we’ve got to find him, Frank. He’s dangerous.”

“I don’t know what happened to my aunt and uncle. After that summer, I never heard from them, never visited. My parents never spoke of them. Or if they did I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t want to know. I don’t remember the way to their home. I can tell you it was over the river, but...I was just a kid. I’m sorry. I must go now.”

He quickly buttoned his coat and motioned for Nick to walk out ahead of him.

Frank turned to lock the door behind him as Nick stood in the hall which was filling with students heading to classes and professors scurrying by. “I hope this is the last we speak of it, Detective. Good luck with your search.”

He walked away without another word or look. _What must it be like to know you lived among monsters? To know the same blood courses within you?_

* * *

“He’s still there?” Claire cradled the phone against her shoulder and tucked her body against the divider as nurses scooted past her, readying for a shift change. “Okay, I’ll be right down. Don’t let him leave.”

Jamie had come in to get a new cast put on his hand and have the sutures removed from his back. In the weeks since the attack, he’d not asked Claire about his back -what it looked like. She wouldn’t have an explanation in any case. She saw him through a crack in the bathroom door a few days ago, holding a hand mirror up as he examined himself. He knew then. Had seen the letters. But he said nothing.

Claire leaned against the elevator wall, swallowing the anger that rose in her over the loss of his skin. That beautiful expanse where her hands roamed, grasped fiercely, scratched, kissed. Would her fingers trace the lines of the scars ever after, tarnishing their lovemaking with violence? Had he taken that from them too?

The hall leading to Jamie’s room was quiet. Laundry carts stacked with linens for room turnover and abandoned gurneys waiting for retrieval were her only company as she walked. A dying light at the end flickered incessantly. His room was just around the corner. As she neared the corner a man strode into her line of sight, long, precise steps directly toward her.

She looked up from his glossy wingtips and stuttered, surprised. “Fr-“ _No, not Frank._ “...Sorry. I thought I knew you, for a moment.”

He stopped before her, face impassive. “Can you direct me to the administrative offices? I’m looking for the hospital director. Mr. Hopper.”

The hairs on her arms rose, a prickling tension rippling through her as her heart crawled into her throat. “Yes uh...eighth floor.”

He stepped around her and began walking to the elevator. Without turning, he spoke. “Thank you, Claire.”

Fight or flight. But what of paralysis? What of limbs frozen, blood pumping frantically in alert but the mind unable to process what to do. Claire gulped at air like she was drowning, turned her body slowly, and watched as the man entered the elevator, as casual as she had been a few minutes ago.

“I have a nametag. He read the nametag.” She whispered the words to herself against a roaring truth she didn’t want to fully acknowledge. “Oh god, Jamie!”

She whirled around the corner and crashed into the door to his room, sending it careening into the doorstop against the wall. Jamie stood frozen, one arm sliding into the sleeve of his shirt, a shocked and bemused expression on his face. “Claire? I was worried ye’d be too busy to stop here before I left.” He pulled his sleeve through and looked back at her. “Christ, yer white as a sheet. Are ye not well?”

He reached for her and pulled one of her shaking hands to his chest. “Yer freezing.”

She pressed into him, clinging to his neck. “He’s here. He...in the hall. He talked to me.”

“What do ye mean? Who?”

She shook her head, unwilling to speak his name, a small noise escaping her throat. “He had to have walked right by your room.”

“Randall? Ye’re sure? I saw no one. Jesus Christ, Claire.” Jamie brushed his hand over her neck, strands of curly hair falling down, tickling his fingers.

“He said my name.”


	9. I Won't Let Him Take You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie, Claire, John, and Nick devise a plan to track down BJR. Claire and Jamie set off to begin the hunt.

“Jamie, you’re going to pace a hole through the floor. Mrs. Vernon will never forgive you if you get ceiling on her table cloth.”

Jamie stopped mid-stride and cocked his head at Claire, who was wiping the dinner crumbs from the table. “I canna kick back on the sofa waiting, and my feet are about the only thing working right now so I hope ye can forgive me wantin’ to use them.”

Claire cupped her palm and pushed the crumbs into it. Shuffling back to the kitchen she muttered, “Not the only thing.”

“Yer ability to make light in the midst of this madness far surpasses my own.”

She brushed her hands off over the sink and came back to the living room where he paced, slipping into the armchair, letting her body slink back against it. “I know it’s frustrating, but I also know there’s nothing we can do until John and Nick get here to hopefully enlighten us with all the wonderful things they’ve discovered. Come here.” She held her hand out to him.

He didn’t quite smile back at her, but his tense features cracked just a little as he knelt before her, resting his head in her lap.

“Jamie, your body is still healing. To add all this worry on top of it… I’ve seen people heal who shouldn’t have healed because something in them fought so hard, believed so completely. And I’ve seen people who had no business dying just give up and their body obeyed. I don’t have a good explanation for it, but it does seem to matter, the worry we hold. The environment we create for our minds. It’s all connected somehow.”

“What would ye have me do?”

“Think of something beautiful, a favorite memory, something that calms you.”

“Hmmph.” He didn’t speak for a few minutes, just humming gently against her thigh. She ran her fingers through his hair in rhythm with his hums. “I remember a day I was sore at my da. He’d punished me fer something I dinna feel was my fault - I canna remember exactly what it was now, but I was old enough to be angry about it. I couldna shake it, felt myself wanting to wallop him.

“I went for a long walk to try to get out of his sight. And I came upon a cave. Not easy to see. Ye had to climb up a bit and push through the brush, but it was a good size once in. It was inky black in there, hardly any light gettin’ through and I just sat in it, shiverin’ a bit, wi’ nothin’ but my thoughts.

“I thought about how I wished I could just walk back into that house and not have that feelin’, that anchor of anger ‘round my neck. To just choose to no’ be troubled by it. And I thought that rather clever and mature of me, to want to be bigger than the anger.”

Claire laughed lightly. “Proud young man, were you?”

“Aye. A bit less of both now. So, I resolved to be the bigger man. I’d return home. Forgive him. And he’d feel like shite seein’ how grown-up I was. I walk home and Jenny’s at the door jabbin’ her finger in my chest yellin’ about being late for supper and my da is at the table. And he just smiles at me, like nothin’ had happened. ‘Come eat son, before it’s cold.’ And I was fumin’ again, just like that. I thought I wanted to be the better man, but really I just wanted him to _see_ it, see how much I’d grown. Instead it just felt like he was laughin’ at me, though I know he wasna.

“I went to bed that night still angry, and I lie in bed, starin’ out at the moon and slowly it made me feel peaceful. And I thought how small I was. A speck on the earth staring out at the moon who has no clue I’m spyin’ on it. Wouldn’t care if it did know. And I realized well that’s the power of it. Not lettin’ someone’s gaze shake ye. Knowin’ yerself and knowin’ that’s all ye can control. Who ye are. How ye react. I felt wronged - there’s no way around that. But maybe I just needed to let it go. And not concern myself wi’ whether or not he knew I was lettin’ it go. Forgive him. Not let that hang between us, colorin’ every moment. That just keeps it alive.”

He sat up, his hair sticking in all directions from Claire’s fingers.

Claire shifted in her seat, her brows knitted. “Are you saying you want to...forgive Randall?”

“No. No’ exactly. I still have every intention of seein’ that bastard put down. But ye’re right about lettin’ him have more power over me still. The anger and frustration will eat me up before it has a chance to touch him. We’ll find him. I know it. But I’ll no’ let what he did ruin more than what’s already done.”

“Do you think he’s watching us? It couldn’t have been coincidence that he walked by your room.”

Jamie shook his head, hunched his shoulders and offered no certainty. “We’ll always be lookin’ over our shoulders if we don’t stop him. That is all I’m sure of”

A soft rap at the door signaled John and Nick’s arrival.  John opened it with his own key before Jamie had a chance and the four of them exchanged hellos as Claire ushered them in to the living room, stopping at the liquor cabinet on the way.

Nick spread a stack of folders and maps out on the coffee table.

Jamie leaned over them, curiously thumbing through the papers. “This looks promising. Ye’ve found something then?”

John took a sheet of paper from the top, filled with names and addresses. “We’ve come up with properties in the surrounding counties that might be what we’re looking for. The information is a bit spotty. Rural record-keeping not being terribly proper. But it is a start. We were thinking we could split up the list, explore the areas, see what comes of it.”

Claire pulled the list from his hand, glancing over the names and addresses. She looked at Jamie and he nodded. “Something happened earlier. At the hospital.” She told them of seeing Jack. How he’d walked by Jamie’s room, walked straight to her, called her by her name. The darkness of his eyes. The thrill he must have had sensing her fear.

They looked to one another, a new level of urgency to their efforts. John shook his head in disbelief, that they were in the sights of this madman. “Does he know? Do you think he knows what we’re doing?”

Nick leaned back, running his hand through his hair. “I don’t know how much he knows about what we’re doing. But he understands how it makes us feel, to see him. To know he has the ability to find us. That’s how he works. He doesn’t have to do anything to control people. He moves through the world in shadows only appearing when he knows it will have some affect. These politicians he pockets, he doesn’t ever do anything, probably doesn’t even threaten to do anything. But if he lets them know that he has information, that he can get to them, he’s in control. Same with us. Just a flash of muscle.”

Jamie scoffed. “He did a good deal more than show himself regarding Dougal.”

“Dougal crossed him. You defy him, he’ll strike. You defer, and he’ll slither back to the shadows.”

Claire leaned against the arm of the chair. “We’ve no more time to spare. How do we proceed?”

Nick leaned over the table and pulled four maps out, highlighting sections of rural areas outside the city, past the river. “I spoke with Frank briefly today.”

Claire’s eyes shot to him in surprise.

“I didn’t get much to go on. He doesn’t seem to remember where it might be, but he told me a story about them going through a woods close to the house - he said maybe half a mile - that had a small creek running through it. I don’t know if that creek is going to show on maps, but it’s all we’ve got.”

They each grabbed a map and began looking, circling potential spots and referencing the addresses John and Nick had found. Half an hour later, eyes red and straining in the yellow glow of the lamp, they placed the maps together in the middle of the table.

Jamie scratched at his arm, tiring already of the impediment. “That’s...six possible locations. We need vehicles. I can check with Rupert. See if I can borrow his truck, but we’ll not all fit in it.”

“I can get a precinct car,” Nick said. “Likely can’t take it out right away tomorrow - I’ve got court in the morning. But I’ll sign up it out, have it ready to go for John and I.”

Claire stood, pacing behind Jamie’s chair. “I’ve off tomorrow so Jamie and I could check out the first four and maybe we agree to meet somewhere across the river later afternoon.” Jamie and Nick nodded, but John sat still beside Nick, looking at the maps.

Nick’s fingers tapped on John’s thigh and he spoke quietly, “Hey, what are you thinking? You look a bit apprehensive.”

John cleared his throat, rubbing a hand along the nape of his neck. “What are we doing? What happens if we find a property we think is his? What then? What if he’s there? I know you’re used to approaching danger, but...I generally tend to head the other way in these situations.” His voice got louder, more agitated as he tried to articulate his worry. “You talk about taking him out, like we’re tossing out refuse, but every time I try to imagine an encounter with him…”

Nick nodded. “You’re right. It’s dangerous. You don’t have to do this, John. You know? I don’t want you feeling like you have to put yourself in-”

“-I’m not backing out, Nick. I would never ask you to go alone. That’s not acceptable. I just...I don’t even know _how_ we intend to take him out.”

“Well, I would imagine bullets our best option as I don’t care to get anywhere near this guy. Jamie, do you have a gun?”

“Nae, I’m no’ fond of -”

“-I do.”

Jamie twisted his neck back to look at Claire, taken aback by her declaration. “Ye do? Where?”

Claire shrugged and smiled grimly at the faces staring at her. “In a box in the closet. I had a patient at the hospital who had talked about getting one for protection. She had a difficult husband and we often saw her with bruises, broken fingers and such. She procured one for me.”

A small moment of silence in the room as they considered that perhaps Claire had seen more violence than the rest of them, that the nerve required to protect against monsters was not so hard to summon for women.

“You know how to use it?” Nick stood and began pacing as he considered a plan. She nodded. “Here’s how I think we do this. We’re going out there to scout tomorrow. We don’t need to do anything, but we want to get close enough to get an idea if we’re in the right place. We’re looking for some place that might look a bit run-down but not totally abandoned. I don’t think there will be anyone else. This guy seems like a loner. But just be careful about getting too close. And stick together. Never go off alone. We’ll meet up like Claire suggested. There’s a town about twenty minutes past the river. I’ve been through a few times and I recall seeing a diner on the main road through. So we look around, keep our distance, meet up at the diner.”

* * *

 

John’s ear was pressed to the pillow, muffling the ambient sounds of the apartment, tethering him to his own biological percussion. The pulse and whoosh of blood pumping through him. His exposed ear caught the remaining sounds of the room hungrily. Nick hummed himself to sleep, he’d learned. An almost imperceptible drone. _Does he even know he’s doing it?_

Dread nestled into his chest, claiming the uncertain spaces, and John pressed his hand over the rise and fall of Nick’s stomach. He had felt it first with Jamie. First an attraction, a desire. Then a need. Not to possess him, but to know him. To understand him as no other and build within himself a shape that only Jamie fit. He knew it was futile, to want more, but he indulged himself for years. Eventually, the desire settled into the back of his mind, present, but not demanding. He loved him, but did not need more.

Nick was the first. The first where the draw, the desire, and the need did not end unfulfilled. He’d not imagined having all of it would shatter him so greatly. The joy amplified. The fear monumental. It was fear now slinking into the dark corners of his mind. He could lose everything so easily.

He pressed his mouth to Nick’s shoulder. “I won’t let him take you.”

* * *

 

“What were you talking to Rupert about? It had to be more than just the truck.” They jerked forward as Claire popped the clutch, easing onto faster roads now as the city receded in their rearview.

Jamie’s legs were spread wide, too long for the old truck’s cab. He mindlessly scratched at his arm and rolled his head to the side against the seat to look at Claire. “Och, no’ much. Just discussing how to proceed with the shop.”

“And how will you be proceeding?”

He turned away, his face dark and unreadable. “Mmph. Not sure yet.”

She sensed his unease. He was hiding something from her, but she’d not press him on it now.

She turned off the main road, just past the town with the diner where they’d be meeting John and Nick in the afternoon. Jamie’s finger trailed over the map, squinting at road signs which were few and far between.

“Ten miles straight on this road. Looks to curve ‘round a lake in a few miles but stay on it for a bit.”

The road took them through another small town and something that was nothing more than a gas station and a dilapidated storage shed. The hilly forested land near the river gave way to flatter farmland as the miles wore on.

“Are ye excited to see some coos, Claire?”

She grinned at him and found a smile on his face she hadn’t seen in quite some time. “Well, I’d guess that you are. By the smell, I’d guess we’re not far off from some.”

Jamie rolled down his window, catching a faceful of manure-scented wind. “Slow down up here.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to speak wi’ them if that’s no’ too much trouble.”

Claire snorted a laugh and slowed the truck onto the shoulder where some cows lingered at the fence line, mouths lazily chewing alfalfa while their tails swatted away flies. “Ask them if they know Jack Randall.”

Jamie leaned out the window and let out a bellowing “moooooo!”. The cows looked up for a moment and considered his question, but offered no reply. He tucked his head back into the cab and turned to Claire,“They dinna ken.”

“Worth a shot.”

Claire pulled back onto the empty road and Jamie rolled his window up. He turned to Claire, who could not contain herself any longer and they both dissolved into giggles, gasping for air. “Are we going mad?”

“Aye, we’re long gone. We must be to be doin’ what we are.”

Their laughter subsided, and silence descended. The pistol tucked into Claire’s jacket thudded against her ribs as the truck bounced over the uneven road. The nature of their excursion once again infused the air and Jamie’s attention fell to the map, of the circled locations where he might lie in wait.

“Another mile turn right and then half a mile or so is the first property.” The gravel from the road kicked up by the tires pinged against the belly of the truck, the jostling of the bumpy road inflaming the itchy scarred skin on Jamie’s back.  

The first property was instantly ruled out, as two small children swung from a tire swing in the front yard. “I don’t see him as a family man, do you?” Jamie asked, brow raised skeptically.

Two more properties required closer inspection but didn’t quite fit either. One having too many tended gardens and the other having burned down at some point, leaving a charred husk hidden by a thick grove of poplars. They decided that spot was safe as any and sat in the bed of the truck, feet dangling off the tailgate, and ate a lunch Claire had packed consisting of ham sandwiches and root beer.

“This is our first picnic, Jamie. Quite a memorable one, I’d say.”

“Hmmph. I will say, ye look verra bonny drivin’ the truck wi’ yer curly hair flyin’ about yer face. Ye like the truck?”

She turned to him, squinting as the sun cut through the trees. “I do. Did you know I sometimes daydream about being a landscaper? Driving around in a truck delivering plants. Coming home covered in dirt. I rather like the idea.”

“I didna ken that, but it doesna surprise me a bit. Yer a very dirty woman.”

She slapped his chest playfully and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Maybe we need a new sky over our heads. When this is all done.” Her voice was soft and tinged with melancholy. The emotions were too much to sustain moment to moment. Love, fear, hope, anger, longing, desperation.

“Aye. Perhaps.”

Claire tucked the empty bottles into a bag that she tossed on the floor of the cab and Jamie jumped down and headed behind a tree to relieve himself before they continued with their work. She settled behind the wheel, picking a bit of fat from the ham out of her teeth. When Jamie returned they examined the map for their next stop. Only a couple miles down the road.

“John and Nick should be out lookin’ by now.”

Claire glanced at the map on his lap, but couldn’t read it from her angle. “Which side of the road?”

“Ahh…it should be on the left. That tree line – I think it’s just on the other side. Slow down and pull up behind the trees and we’ll get out.”

She parked the truck under the shady dogwood. “Should we walk behind those outbuildings to get a little closer?”

“Aye, we canna tell a thing from here. Stay close to me.”

They crept through the copse of trees along the side of the property, coming through along the back of a storage shed, weathered, rotting, and tilting precariously. The disheveled outbuildings certainly didn’t hint at upkeep, but it wasn’t that uncommon a sight either. Jamie leaned against the knotted wood to peer through the cracks to see what might lie inside and Claire leaned into him, needing to feel his solid frame as fear at what they were doing, what they might find, crept along her spine.

“Do you see anything, Jamie?”

Instead of his answer, she heard the distinct sound of a shotgun cocking.


	10. Leave, John. Go.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search for Randall continues as Jamie and Claire unexpectedly discover new information. John and Nick are surprised at what they find.

“Don’t move.”

Jamie’s body turned to stone as his instinct to fight flooded through his limbs. But the pitch of the voice steadied his growing panic. It was not what he’d expected to hear.

“We dinna mean harm. We’re just lookin’ for someone.” Jamie slowly turned his head to see who held the gun and was rather shocked to find its owner to be a short, sturdy woman who’d seen more than a few years. His body deflated as the fear rushed out of him. While she still held the rifle up, he didn’t get the feeling this was Randall’s accomplice.

The woman’s overalls hugged her middle snuggly and ballooned at the legs, tattered threads hanging at the ankles. She had a kerchief tied over her grey hair which was pulled back in a low ponytail that had lost its hold on a good many stray hairs now clinging to the sweat on her weathered cheeks.

She squinted at Jamie and nodded to Claire. “You and your girl looking for privacy. Is that it? This ain’t no motel.”

Claire risked slowly turning toward her, hands held palms up in front of her. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. We really should not be on your property. We’ll leave.”

She looked Claire over, her gaze lingering on the bulge of Claire’s coat pocket. “You said you’re looking for someone. Either that someone is trouble or you’re trouble seein’ as you’ve got a gun in that pocket. So, which is it?”

Claire glanced at Jamie and he nodded his assent. “We’re trying to stop someone who is very dangerous. We believe he may have a home somewhere around here.”

The woman looked to Jamie, at the fading scar on his forehead, the cast on his hand. She lowered the gun to her hip, still keeping it aimed at them. “Come with me and let’s have a little talk.”

She introduced herself as Maggie and led them - gun still at the ready - to her house, an old farmhouse in need of a new paint job but otherwise in decent shape, save a broken board on the steps that she warned them not to step on.

Her kitchen table was littered with mail and seed catalogs and a bowl containing a murky, unidentifiable liquid. She gestured for them to sit and joined them, arms folded across her chest.

“So, how did you end up at my property?”

Jamie rested his casted arm on the table and leaned in, wondering to himself just how much to tell. “We tried to find properties in this area wi’ ties to the name ‘Randall’. We determined this was one. No’ much to go on, I’m afraid.”

Maggie nodded and said nothing for a moment. “My cousin lived here years ago, was married to a Randall. There’s a few around these parts.” She leaned back in her chair, looking down the hall with eyes that weren’t seeing but remembering.

Claire watched her, seeing the thoughts churning behind the crease in her brow. “You know who we’re looking for.”

Maggie’s eyes met Claire’s and she nodded. “I suppose you’re looking for Johnnie Randall.”

Jamie and Claire couldn’t hide their surprise, instantly confirming Maggie’s guess.

“I haven’t thought about that family in a good long while. Not something you really want to think about.”

Claire turned toward Maggie, suddenly curious just how much she might know. “Do you know what happened to his parents?”

Maggie loosed a breath and shook her head. She pushed her chair back and shuffled to the sink, running her hands under water and scraping dirt from the cracks in her skin. She turned back to them and wiped her hands on the front of her overalls. “I don’t know. Only one person knows for sure. And you’re looking to put a bullet in him. So, I guess if he tells you beforehand, pass it on to satisfy my curiosity.”

Jamie’s jaw clenched at the mention of their intentions, that unimaginable confrontation at the end of this road. “What do _you_ think happened to them, Maggie?”

She stared out the back to the garden. The sun was low enough to cut sharp angled shadows through the screen door, illuminating the dust drifting through the air. “His old man was a real son of a bitch. Nobody would argue that. And it sure makes you wonder if you can pass that on as part of your nature, seeing how Johnnie was. Is. They found the father in the woods not far from the house. Said he fell in the creek. Hit his head on a rock. Passed out and drowned.”

“You don’t think that’s what happened?” Jamie asked.

“I think that boy got his revenge for what happened to him. For what happened to his brother. He died there too, you know. What are the odds that two people from the same family fall and hit their heads and drown in a tiny little creek in the woods?”

“Christ.” Jamie ran his hand through his hair, then squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, a tension headache building slowly behind his eyes.

Claire rested her hand on his thigh, the pads of her fingers making small circles over the fabric. “What happened to the mother?”

“Strung herself up in the house a month later. Or someone strung her up. No way to know. So, his _is_ a story of tragedy. But I’d be lyin’ if I said I wasn’t relieved at the thought of closing that door for good.”

“Well,” Jamie pressed his back against the chair, trying to relieve the itch of the scarring skin, “I thank ye for sharin’ what ye know. I don’t suppose ye would know precisely where the house is?”

Claire pushed their map into the center of the table and Maggie leaned over it, her palms pressed into the worn wood table. “Well, you’ve got it circled right here.”

Jamie stood to get a better look and grabbed Claire’s hand. “That’s one of John and Nick’s.”

“We have some friends helping us look. They may be going to that property now,” Claire explained.

“Hold on.” Maggie walked over to counter and opened a small drawer filled with junk and returned with a pencil. She circled a spot a little way beyond the house, just off a small road. “They had a building here too. Just storage I think. Not sure if it’s still standing, but I don’t think it sold with the implement building, so it should still belong to him. I’d have a look around there, too.”

Jamie offered his left hand to shake. “Thank ye, Maggie. Fer sharin’ what ye know. And fer no’ shootin’ us.”

She smiled, but her eyes held them, serious and wary. “I don’t think it’s much use to tell you to be careful, but I will wish you luck. And don’t be afraid to stop by when matters have been resolved.”

Claire leaned forward and kissed Maggie’s cheek, genuinely touched by her help and her honesty. “Thank you, Maggie.”

* * *

 

“This one? With the gate?” Nick slowed the car, pulling it to the shoulder. The dust, kicked up in their wake, dispersed as the car came to a halt.

“Yes. Someone must live here if there’s a gate.” John tucked the map into the glove box and peered out the window at the wooded drive. The property wasn’t fenced, but there was a deep drainage ditch before the gate that made it impossible to get around with a car.

“Someone who doesn’t want visitors. I got a feelin’ here, John.”

John’s throat burned from the dusty roads and tightened with the fear of what they were walking into. He hated that he didn’t have some reserve of courage he could tap into like Nick seemed to. Turn a switch and focus.

Nick’s hand found his and squeezed. “You okay? We’re just going to look around.”

John nodded. Face fear now or face it forever.

They inched around the edge of the locked gate and walked in the trees along the curved drive. The grass had gone to seed, brushing against their knees in the shallow ditch. Vegetation bloomed wild around the run-down house.

“No vehicle. I don’t think he’s here.” Nick slowly moved onto the drive and held his gun at his side while John followed close behind. The sun was getting lower, but no lights were on in the house.

Nick stepped onto the porch and John grasped his arm, “What are you doing?”

“Checking out this window.” He crouched below it and tried to see between the gap in the curtain, but it was too small. He motioned for John to come up onto the porch and he did, though reluctantly. “So, what do you think?”

John took a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm himself. To think straight. “Well, I think you’re right. There doesn’t appear to be anyone home now, or for quite some time. I don’t know where that leaves us, though.”

“It leaves us with shrugging our shoulders and moving on or...we take a closer look.”

John’s brows knitted together in confusion. “We’re quite as close as we can get, I’d say.”

Nick fished a metal pin from his pocket and held it up to John then nodded to the door lock.

“Nick.”

“Real quick. We gotta try.”

Nick picked the lock with relative ease and John pushed tightly behind him, fully committed to not being separated at all. “I’ll open it slow,” Nick whispered. The door creaked open and Nick leaned in, gun held out. He slowly moved in, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. John eased in behind him and left the door open to let in some light.

The stale air reeked of mildew and damp wood.

They crept forward into the empty living room then moved to the kitchen and dining room. A pot sat on the stove top, covered with dust and dead bugs. John nudged Nick and pointed to the clock on the wall. “Still works.” A small bathroom sat just off the kitchen. A dusty clawfoot tub. A toilet, stained and missing a seat, but with water in the bowl.

“Let’s go upstairs and check out the bedrooms. Stay close.” Nick winced as the steps creaked with each move. The dark, narrow staircase led them to the low-ceilinged second floor.

The first bedroom door was wide open, revealing an empty room, save for some boards on the floor, scraps from a torn-apart dresser.  The tiny closet, empty.

The door to the master bedroom was half-open, the room pitched in a murky, dim light with heavy curtains pulled together. Nick eased forward into the room, gun held out.

He felt the liquid on his hand first, before he felt the pain. The blood ran down his arm, under his shirt, a warm viscous trail over his skin. The pain that followed stole his breath and he gasped as the gun fell from his hand.

But he never heard it hit the floor. Only felt the violent pull on his coat sleeve as he was yanked forward into the room. The cut across the top of his hand stung and he gasped as a hand wrapped around his and twisted, pulling until he felt a pop in his wrist and blinding pain that made the muscles in his legs give way. Another arm wrapped around his chest and a cold, wet blade pressed into his neck as he tried to orient himself, tried to see, to understand what had happened. But he only heard John.

“No! Please stop! Don’t hurt him anymore!” John’s cries withered and died in the darkness. He held his shaking palms up, pleading.

Randall’s rapid breath huffed into Nick’s ear as he spat instructions at John. “In here. Face down on the floor. If you move I will slice his throat.”

“Leave, John. Go.” Nick gasped as the knife tip pierced his skin.

“If you wish for your friend to die, by all means, John. Go.” Randall’s voice had changed. His breath even and cold. He had them in his control, the power over them and delight in what he planned to do, infusing him with calm confidence. He was enjoying this.

John knees cracked against the hardwood as he crawled into the room. He pressed his face to the floor, dust clinging to his sweaty cheek. He heard a drawer open, rustling, and then Nick’s voice muffled. A cry of pain seeped through it and John barely held himself down.

Randall knelt over him then, pulling John’s hands behind him and tying them with a rough, thin rope that cut into his skin. His ankles were tied as well and bound up behind him to his wrists. Randall shoved a rag in John’s mouth and tied a long strip of fabric around his head to hold it in place. It sent him gagging and choking as panic rose in his gut. John stretched his neck to the side just in time to see, through his watering eyes, the back of Nick’s shoes as Randall pulled him out of the room to the stairs.

The creaking of their footsteps grew distant. A door closing. Silence. A low, desperate moan accompanied each breath. He had believed, when he kissed Nick’s shoulder, that his promise was enough. That the love and hope that had grown between them would somehow have the power to overcome the intent of the wicked. His foolishness gnawed at his insides as he listened to his lover being dragged away to be killed while he lie helpless.

John’s fingers grabbed desperately for the rope and slid from it, unable to gain purchase. Over and over until the skin on his fingertips was raw, until he began to lose feeling in his wrists and no longer knew if his fingers were even touching the rope. He’d lost track of time in his panic. It may have been minutes. It may have been an hour.

John inched his body across the floor, awkward and slow. He rolled through Nick’s blood, recoiling as it soaked into his shirt as he neared the door. His muscles ached, and his wrists bled as he pushed himself to the top of the stairs.

Footsteps, stilled on the porch at the front door. The squeak and rattle of the doorknob turning.

Bile rose in John’s throat and his eyes scanned the room wildly for anything sharp. He couldn’t let Randall take him. A bed. A dresser. Nothing. The door opened, and the fading light of the day fell upon his helpless form.


	11. A Raindrop In His Flood Of Sins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The race to save Nick and stop Randall is on.
> 
> Warning: violence

The sight of their silhouettes tore from John a muffled scream, relief and panic wrestling for dominance. Jamie took the stairs two-at-a-time and pulled out his pocket knife. Claire slipped by him, taking it from his hand. She frantically cut at the ropes as Jamie tried to loosen the fabric over John’s mouth with only one hand. John gagged as Jamie pulled the rag from his mouth, gasping and sick from the fetid cloth.

“Are ye hurt? Where is Nick?”

Claire cut through the final rope and John’s legs snapped down. He curled his body in, stretching the muscles that had been pulled taut. She continued working at the rope still holding his wrists.

“He took him. He’s hurt. I don’t know where. We have to go now!” John pulled his legs around to stand and Claire pushed his shoulder down.

“Wait one second, so I...can get this...last...rope. There.”

John’s thin wrists were raw, bleeding on the bone, and he shook them loose as he stood, ignoring the pain. His face contorted in helpless grief, and tears began to fall, cutting paths through the dust and dirt on his skin. “I don’t know where he is.”

Jamie pulled John into his arms, his hand cradling John’s neck against his shoulder. “We’ll get him. Claire and I found out about another building Randall owns. I would guess that’s where he went. It’s not far. Can ye manage? If ye’d rather stay back, say the word.”

“I’m not staying back.”

* * *

 

The rope around Nick’s wrists cut into his skin deeper with each step into the woods. His hands were burning, swelling and rigid. Blood congealed around the rope. The pain shot up his arm as they moved frantic and urgent through the brambles and limbs. He was pulled to a stop on the edge of a stream and pushed to his knees into the damp mash of dead leaves and mud.

Randall’s face appeared to his right, a crouching demon in his periphery. Nick refused the acknowledgement and waited for the blow. Fear churned his gut, but above that a whispered desire for it to be quick.

“I have been thinking about you these last few weeks, wondering what it must be like inside your head. Did you truly expect to emerge the hero or were you merely playing the part for John? It just seems so naive to think you could just show up and what? Shoot me? It’s so...insulting, really.”

Randall reached over and pulled the fabric and rag out of Nick’s mouth. “Do not make a sound or you will find yourself in even more pain.”

Nick ran his dry tongue across the back of his teeth as he stared at the moving water, splitting smoothly around rocks, carrying away twigs. He imagined the relief of dipping his bleeding hand into the cool water, the stinging cleanse.

“If you want to conquer me, you must understand me. You must let a part of yourself become me. I learned that a long time ago. Right here, in fact. You see this rock?” He pointed to a small, jagged rock, not two feet from Nick. “I pushed him and when he fell he hit his head on this rock. And he lie next to it groaning and bleeding, not getting up. All it took was a roll and he was in the water, face down. He got a simple, quiet death. But he deserved something far worse. And looking at his corpse in the water, I realized I wanted more. That was not enough. He’d taken Alex here and I’d done the same to him, but that was just a raindrop in his flood of sins.”

Nick shook his head slowly. “Is that what you think you’re doing? Exacting justice?”

“Hmm...no. There is no such thing, which you well know. I am merely understanding him. And I want you to understand me, Nick.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re here. Because you came to me.”

Randall stood suddenly and yanked Nick to his feet, dragging him down the path that followed the creek until they came to the edge of a field. Randall’s truck was parked in the ruts of an access trail. He loaded Nick into the bed of the truck, tying a rope through the one binding Nick’s hands and securing it to a hook on the back of the tailgate. The rough road had Nick’s teeth grinding as his hand jostled about. The sun had now dropped to the edge of the horizon, the cooler air drying the sweat as it formed on his neck.

The storage shed had large doors on one end, padlocked shut, and a smaller service door on the side. He led Nick through and into the darkness. Rafters above, crisscrossed with boards, stored boxes of junk from years past. Ventilation windows in the rafters were propped open, letting in the faint light of dusk. Most of the space was shadows. Shelves with rusted parts. Tool boxes and empty crates stacked against walls. Hanging from the center rafter a heavy chain attached to a pulley and a massive hook, once used for lifting engines.

Nick peered around him and saw a hundred weapons. If only he could get to them. Randall pushed Nick to the middle of the room and dropped a rope around his neck, tightening it under his chin. He looked up and saw it was tied to a rafter. A noose tied to a rafter. He’d been waiting for them.

“Now, if you’ll wait here, I will retrieve John.” Randall paused, steps from the door, as faint shadows flickered on the ground. “Or perhaps John will not require my assistance. Has he come for you, Nick?”

He pulled the gun from his coat and held it near his chest. Waiting. Nothing.

“It was probably an animal.” Nick swallowed, cursing the panic swelling in him with each passing second.

“Perhaps John can wait. We’re losing light and we’ve much to do.” Randall moved behind Nick and untied the ropes around his wrists. Nausea washed over him as his hands were pulled to the front and tied again. This time he looped the other end of the rope over the hanging hook, pulling Nick’s hands out before him. The sounds of his actions grew louder in Nick’s ears as the light disappeared. The rasping scratch as the knife cut through his shirt, tearing apart the back, then one sleeve, then the other, until it fell to the ground, a ghostly puddle at his feet.

“What are you doing?” Nick’s breath grew increasingly ragged as Randall’s calmed. Fear victorious.

“You cannot understand me while wearing this.” Randall reached for the button of Nick’s trousers and Nick pulled away as far as he could before the rope began to tighten around his neck.

“Don’t.”

“Would you rather I use the knife?”

Every minute he prolonged this was another minute he stayed alive. Every minute he took whatever gleeful punishment Randall doled out, was another minute for his friends to find a way to help him. To end this. He would take it. He would survive it.

Nick could not see what Randall retrieved from the box, nor where he stood. He heard it cut through the air, a high-pitched angry slice that flattened diagonally across his back and stole his breath. In the beginning the belt merely stung, but as his skin inflamed and welted, it began to burn and cry out, it’s strength shattering against the onslaught. He arched and yelled and Randall stopped.

“No. You do not cry out. It is weak.” Randall had begun to work up a sweat, his breath blowing against Nick’s damp neck as he spoke.

Nick braced himself for the next hit and lost his balance as it unexpectedly landed on the back of his thighs. He dropped for a moment and the noose tightened, cutting into the skin over his trachea. He quickly scrambled and pulled himself upright with his good hand. His muscles began to spasm, too strained. In a moment between hits, he realized this new pain had made him forget about his hand.

As Randall fell into the trance of playing out his warped memories, a window near the rafters eased open a few more inches and Claire slipped through in her stockinged feet, crouching and inching along the boards. Her arms began to shake as she realized what was happening below her. John eased silently through the window a minute later.

The belt stopped. Nick’s whimpering rasp filled the air. Claire watched Randall wrap the belt up and place it in a box. He turned and walked to the door, unlatching it and easing it open. _Please be hiding, Jamie._ Randall arched his back. Stretching out the tension from his labor.

John quickly moved to the rafters toward the middle of the room, while Claire remained near the wall. She had the gun, would use it gladly, were there a little light and not an impossible maze of crates and boards. She might have a shot if she could move far enough, but there was no telling how possible that would be. If Randall would leave for a few moments it might be. But he turned back, leaving the door slightly ajar so a light breeze filtered in.

John breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been tasked with finding a way to unlock the door for Jamie to enter and it seemed impossible until then. They couldn’t risk Jamie trying to make it up the ladder with his broken hand and his bulk would make maneuvering above a risk as well.

When they’d arrived at the shed, their hearts fell. They couldn’t risk bursting through the door. The ventilation windows along the roof was their only hope. Jamie had run until he nearly vomited, back through the woods to the main house to retrieve an old ladder they’d noticed earlier, hoping it might get them to the open windows. He risked it and prayed they’d make it in time.

Now inside, their only hope was to distract Randall enough for Claire to get a clear shot. How that would happen was a mystery to all of them. And no way to communicate should a plan occur.

There was no plan, but this: Nick must not die. No one, but Randall, could die. To allow any other end to the story would be a merciless victory for madness. The tragic story of Jonathan Randall could only end one way.

The remaining light of day had dissolved and been replaced with a piercing half-moon, slinking in and out of clouds. Jamie glided over the dewy grass to the edge of the door, peering through the crack, hoping he’d not be noticed. John, dead still, clung to the rafter above them. Claire perched on a rafter in the corner, gun in her hand.

Jamie had run from darkness his whole life. Kept it at his back, a diligent shadow haunting his periphery. But here, in this wretched space, the darkness curled around him, offering no direction for relief. He would face it, as would they all. Courage was not kept in a box, waiting to be retrieved. It was always running through the blood, the steely resolve of life refusing to accept defeat. Nothing heroic would occur in this place. Only the reflexive will of the human soul to survive.

It took one ray of moonlight, glinting off the blade of the knife, to ignite the courage in their blood. A chaotic symphony of violent ends began in an instant. Randall’s blade, pulled from its sheath at the side of his torso, slicing in slow motion through the damp evening air toward Nick’s quivering belly laid bare.

Claire’s finger squeezed, unleashing a bullet that found Randall’s shoulder, jerking him backward from Nick’s heaving form. As the sound of the bullet met John’s ear, he leapt from the rafter, launching himself at Randall’s head, desperately hoping to avoid the knife-wielding arm. And in this same moment, Jamie rocketed through the door, eyes wild and red hair flying, a living portrait of his warrior ancestors. His left hand wielded an axe and a growl erupted from his throat as he ran toward Randall’s crumbling frame.

It would almost seem too easy if Randall hadn’t grabbed Nick’s leg as he fell, pulling the noose taut, slowly crushing his windpipe.

Jamie swung the axe down wildly upon Randall’s arm, slicing crudely through at the elbow. His fingers unfurled, and the knife dropped to the blood-soaked ground. Randall’s other hand dropped from Nick’s leg and the awful silence that descended was a terror in itself. Four frantic breaths. One less. Jamie’s arm raised high above his head once more and descended with a roar upon his enemy’s face.

Their lungs took in death with each gasp, adrenaline shaking their limbs apart. Claire dropped the gun and swung down from the rafter to the ground. She steadied first and ran to Nick, pulling him up with all her strength and yelling for Jamie to cut the rope. Jamie grabbed the knife fallen at Randall’s side and sliced the rope to release Nick’s weight and began cutting through the noose slowly.

“He’s still breathing. I can hear him. His neck is swelling. Go quickly.”

“I’m trying. I dinna want to cut him.”

Finally, free of the rope, Claire cradled Nick in her lap, feeling his neck for damage to his airway and he began to rasp words, much to their relief.

“Don’t try to speak, Nick. Just breathe. We’ve got you. We’re going to get out of here.”

Nick grasped her fingers, squeezing. “Joh-”

“He’s right here. John, come here.”

Jamie looked beyond Randall’s corpse to where he thought John had been sitting and instead found his friend lying down, curled on his side. He reached for him and his hand found wetness, warm and sticky, flooding his fingers. “John! No!”

* * *

 

John was eleven when his parents crossed the ocean from England. They’d lived the first year in a city on the coast. His father and older brother spent their days working connections and growing the business while he attended school and became his mother’s constant companion.

She took him to the beach in the summer and he found himself, for the first time, in a churning maelstrom of boys from all social strata, running shirtless through surf and plotting warfare under the pier. He began to understand himself then, the draw to the wild, rough humanity of men. The beautiful stretch of skin over muscle. The sweat and grime that stuck to them in their furious quest to tear into the earth. The sublime perfection of hair falling over their eyes as the wind whipped around them.

Lying in the dark now, feeling the slow flow of life leaving him, he saw himself with Nick, on a beach they’d never been to, lying together at the edge of the tide. He buried his face in Nick’s neck and breathed him in, tasted him, wrapped his limbs around him. With each rush of water climbing higher on their tangled bodies, he pulled tighter still as the sand beneath them was stolen by the retreating water. The sea was burying them slowly. Finally, the water engulfed them entirely and carried them away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left...
> 
> A million thanks to all who have followed this story and left kudos and wonderful comments.


	12. I Am Whole.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. The end of the story. Thank you so much to all the wonderful people who read the story and encouraged me by screaming “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!” at all the right times.
> 
> I started this story with chapter one as part of Gotham’s Writing Workshop, having no intention of making it more than a one-shot. But the world stuck with me and I needed more. It’s by far the darkest thing I’ve ever written, often leaving me exhausted and feeling a bit broken after writing sessions.
> 
> The title, “We Save Ourselves” comes from something Claire says to John when he suggests that Jamie saved her. It’s not meant to be dismissive, but rather acknowledges the collective connection while also realizing that, in the end, it is how we interpret and respond to the events of our lives that is our final test of survival. No other person can completely hold you afloat. We need each other to save ourselves.
> 
> So, the story became these four people, all broken and battered by their lives, coming together to save themselves.
> 
> Thank you again to all who left kudos and commented. Being able to write and have this open dialogue with readers is really wonderful.

“Aye. It’ll be no trouble. I’ll send our courier to ye and he’ll retrieve the design.” Jamie cradled the phone on his shoulder, absentmindedly squeezing a small bag of sand in his hand. “Och, no. No more’n a week. Ten days most.” He shuffled through a pile of papers on the desk and finally settled for ripping the edge off the bottom of an invoice copy. “Enter on Leith or…? Right. Good. Thank ye, sir. Good day.”

The day had started well enough with two new orders coming in just as quality check commenced on the die-cut Duncan had finished the day prior. But things quickly went downhill with a chipped edge found on one and the master cutter out for the rest of the day.

Jamie had been on the phone half the day reassuring the client. As much as he desperately wanted to offer up complaints into the nearest pint, he chose rather to square his shoulders to the work and pay no mind to the leisurely ticking of the clock.

He stretched his hand upon the desk, as far as his crooked fingers would allow and traced the line of scars. Was it daft to count himself a lucky man? He’d trembled under the sky of his home and run, learned to walk in straight lines and take ninety-degree turns. He breathed the grey air that filtered through exhaust and smoke and imagined it baking him from inside, a hard charcoal lining to hold his heart inside his chest.

In truth the blood that runs through the veins of the man carved of steel and concrete spills with the same ease as the man stalking silent through the heather on the hunt.  

His thoughts rarely returned to that bloody day anymore. It felt farther away than the ocean separating him from it. The memories lived in the creases and folds of the map of his life. And as eager as he was to look forward, with all the joy he had found since that day, it would not be forgotten. It would always hold a piece of him.

He studied the machine before him with its edges weathered sharp and smooth.

An axe blade, moonlight glinting off its arcing trajectory. A knife slicing into John’s gut.

_Claire and Nick took John in the car. Raced recklessly over loose gravel to the flickering light of the city hospital. Watching them go, Jamie felt as if the air he needed to breathe was tethered to them and he grew lightheaded and weak the farther away they went._

_Maggie stood on her front porch, waiting for him. At the sight of his bloody clothes she ran to him, pulling him in to the kitchen to search for the wound._

_“I am whole. My friend is not. I need to see to him. I need to go.”_

_She nodded and gripped his arm, looking him square in the eyes. “I’ll take care of it.”_

_“Thank ye.”_

_He drove the truck carefully, with his cast braced tightly against the wheel to keep it steady._ He’ll make it. He’s a survivor. He must.

_Maggie tossed the shovel into the truck bed and grabbed her lantern hanging on the porch. At a certain age she’d begun to feel like every living moment was a reenacted memory. Pulling the truck up to the storage shed now, twin lights cutting through foggy black to rest on the door, clasped shut with a streak of blood marring the latch, she felt herself living the memory of a dream. The bloody end of a bloody man. The gardener come to play her part._

_Her chest ached as she pulled the door open with trembling hands. But the sight of him on the ground, pale and still, dispelled her fears and she felt her purpose here. “The world is done with you, Johnnie Randall. Return to the earth you’ve spoiled.”_

Jamie rubbed his thumb into the palm of his hand, pressing against calluses and tendons. He had been reshaped in that land. For better. For worse. And sometimes he wondered how he couldn’t believe in fate as he sat once again under Scotland’s wide, tumultuous skies.

The essence of his life had begun to condense in the glow of moonlight through his window in the fury of his youth. It continued in the shimmering morning sunlight glinting off the pond where he found friendship’s teasing bliss. Further still in the fluorescent light of the hospital, her hands floating over him in benediction. Sorcha.

It was not unusual for Jamie to be lost in reverie in the early afternoon, his stomach sated, and counting minutes until he could see her again. And so, he found himself startled by the ringing of the bell as the door from the street opened, ushering in a cool gust of wind that kissed his ankles. He stood, shuffling the papers before him.

“That you, Geordie? I’ve another errand for ye.”

Air parted by a nervous silence.

“It’s not Geordie. It’s me. John.”

Jamie’s fingers trembled, and he stilled them against his vest. He turned his body slowly, as if a sudden movement would dispel the ghost. Not a ghost.

Tears sprung forth in his eyes, blurring his sight. “Oh God, John.” Both of their faces broke into smiles, gasping as they remembered to breathe. “I thought…”

They stepped toward each other, a tentative hand raised, then arms grasping and clutching, pulling into an embrace. John shook with unexpected tears. Joy, relief, sadness. “You didn’t really think you’d seen the last of me, did you?”

Jamie pulled back, holding John’s face and grinning. “I thought I’d never see ye again. Ye look well, my friend.”

“As do you.”

He tilted his head and looked over John’s shoulder. “Nick. Come here.”

Nick had hung back in the shadows, giving John and Jamie their moment. And somewhere inside him he worried. That Jamie might not be happy to see him. It was foolish. And he could not say why he feared it. Perhaps because he only knew Jamie in that place, that time, where everything was dark and uncertain. Where they’d all been stripped to their naked fears and left to the elements.

But that worry dissolved as Jamie pulled Nick to him warmly. “It’s good to see you, Jamie.”

The three of them stood foolishly grinning at each other for a moment, uncertain where to begin. “Three years, John. How on earth are ye here?”

John looked to Nick, a silent communication between them. “Well, we are newly returned to the land of my birth. Londontown, in fact. My uncle still has a firm there and he very graciously offered a job. Nick, charmer that he is, has already found some private security work. We’ve some immigration status to deal with, but I think things will be sorted soon.”

Jamie shook his head, smiling. “And ye came all this way to see me?”

Nick sidled up to John and nudged him. “I wasn’t sold on the idea, but he told me I could see Claire, so…”

“Oh, I see. Well, I’ll no’ deny she’s a much finer attraction than I.”

“How is she? Did she find work at a hospital?” John asked, feeling a giddy rush at speaking to Jamie again.

“Aye, she did. She’s no longer working there, however.”

“Did something happen? She is well?”

“Quite well. Can ye come wi’ me to the flat to surprise her?”

* * *

 

The afternoon sun filtered through the gauzy curtains, casting a warm glow to the room and Claire fought the urge to fall asleep where she was, curled into the end of the sofa. She’d gotten almost no sleep the night before and was doubtful tonight would be much better. But still, it felt a waste of a beautiful day to spend it sleeping.

She swung her legs to the floor and rose, stretching her arms and back. Deciding on tea, she put a kettle on the burner and wandered into the hall to check if mail had been delivered. The front door swung open, nearly colliding with her face, and she gasped at the sudden intrusion. “Jamie! Oh, my heart nearly stopped. What on earth are you doing home so early?”

His face was flushed with anticipation. “I’ve a surprise.” He stepped aside, and she gaped at the men before her, these beautiful faces last seen bruised and pained, in the miserable aftermath.

“Oh, God.”

They’d imagined that killing Randall would release them. Lift the dark veil of morbid anticipation. And it had done that. And in its place settled the gruesome memory of the moments themselves. John, bedridden for weeks, pained and weak, gripped his lifeline to Nick and cast the rest of the world aside in order to survive. He rode the waves of pain to keep the drugs away and Nick held his hand in the long nights of shaking and groaning and sleepless nightmares.

Jamie had fallen to his knees in the dark of his bedroom, the vision of John’s blood seeping into every quiet moment. It nipped at his heels as he trudged through the weeks and stubbornly clung to the edges of his fingernails, never clean again. He walked to the shop and pressed his palm into Rupert’s. _I need to go home._

It felt a betrayal, but Claire argued against his myopic visions. _Nick is his world. He is not yours to save._ She was right, but his heart fought against it. And he found her one afternoon, sitting solemnly on the edge of the bed, two tickets in hand. _Take me home._

Stepping off the train with their meager belongings in tow, he was steeled for the crushing weight of Scotland. All the ghosts of his past would be lined up on the platform to bellow their misery to his face. But it was not as he imagined. His feet drifted over the cobblestones and the wind assaulted him, laughing in his face. And he laughed back.

_I am home._

John stepped over the threshold, his eyes brimming with tears. She was a vision. His hand brushed a curl behind her ear and he smiled. “Claire. I’ve missed you.”

“Are you really here? And Nick. Oh, these faces I’ve missed.” She pulled John to her and laughed against his neck. “I could not be more surprised right now. Or more happy.”

Nick followed John and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “This isn’t going to send you into labor, is it?”

John shot him a chastising look. “Forgive him. American.”

The flickering glow of the fireplace cast a spell on them as the evening wore on. The talk meandered through stories of jobs and travel and loss and the joy of impending new life, their voices slowly slipping through the awkwardness of time apart to the drowsy familiarity they once shared.

John stopped in the hall, listening to Claire and Nick laughing over each other, his heart cracking with the beautiful sound. Jamie’s hand settled gently on his shoulder and John leaned into him a little.

“I’m proud of you, John.”

“Proud?”

“Aye. Ye know yerself and are true to it. Few men are true, no matter their history. And ye’ve a right to be proud of it.”

“It feels so fragile. Like it could all shatter with one clumsy move.”

Jamie leaned against the wall next to him, sighing. “We know that more than most. And still, I canna contemplate any other life. The choices I made, foolish as they might ha’ been, led me to ye, to Claire. I wouldna wish anything different if it meant losing that.”

“Nor would I.”


End file.
